Piracy Threats Spike Insurance Premiums
filed in Insurance News on Nov.20, 2008
Find the whole story from the Associated Press here. Apparently ships operating off the coast of Africa are facing higher insurance premiums because of a spike in Piracy, of all things, in areas like the Gulf of Aden and the Africa’s east coast.
However, its not just about plundering ships anymore; its about ransoming them. According to the article, pirates are yielding rocket launchers, demanding multimillion dollar ransoms and hijacking 1,080-foot (329-meter) oil tankers.
Apparently this has been troubling the insurance industry for years, but has never become as volatile or reccurent as it has been recently.
This relates to the huge piracy scare that happpend a couple days ago where Somali pirates seized the oil tanker Sirius Star off the East African coast about 450 miles off Kenya and held the Ukranian crew hostage. Check out the story in the L.A. Times.
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