Somali Pirates Seize Fewest Ships Since 2004 on Guards

By Natasha Doff

Somali pirates hijacked the fewest merchant ships since 2004 last year as armed guards and naval patrols helped deter and repel attacks on a trade lane linking Europe to Asia.

The number of vessels seized off the East African country’s coast fell to two last year from 14 in 2012, the International Maritime Bureau, a London-based group tracking sea crime, said in a report today. Last year’s tally was the smallest since 2004, data from the bureau show. The decrease helped to drive global piracy down to a six-year low.

Private armed guards, naval intervention and other on-board security measures combined with greater stability in Somalia to reduce attacks, according to the IMB. The cost of Somali piracy to the global economy was about $6 billion in 2012 and $7 billion the year before, according to Oceans Beyond Piracy, a project of the Broomfield, Colorado-based One Earth Future Foundation. The pirates had targeted ships that were sailing to or from Egypt’s Suez Canal, a waterway handling about 4.5 percent of oil trade.

Bloomberg News