Hunt of the Sea Wolves

From McClatchy Newspapers:

In energy industry parlance, LNG is short for liquefied natural gas. In the view of electricity production and delivery expert Jason Makansi, those letters should stand for “let’s not go” there.

Makansi opines unequivocally in “Lights Out,” his book on the electricity availability challenges confronting America and the world, that importing large amounts of LNG for bulk electricity generation is a bad idea whose time shouldn’t come.

“What we absolutely, positively do not want is to be dependent on imported LNG like we are on imported petroleum today and into the foreseeable future. That should be painfully obvious. Threatening LNG imports could be helpful in tempering gas prices, but I wouldn’t rely on them for anything else,” he writes.

Makansi, an electricity industry consultant, entrepreneur and author of two previous books on the industry, foresees major problems with LNG. He considers LNG tankers “floating bombs” that are vulnerable to accidents and sabotage by terrorists. And he says coastal facilities where LNG is converted back into a gaseous state are at the mercy of severe coastal storms that are on the increase.

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/192698

Somali pirates who have held a UN-chartered ship and its crew hostage for nearly three months have captured another vessel carrying cement from Egypt.

The incident came within days after the US government issued fresh terror warning against traveling to east Africa, citing piracy in the Somali waters.

The ship, Ibnu Batuta, was carrying cement from the north African country when it was attacked near the port of El Maan, near Mogadishu, said the report quoting Abdi Rahman Kariin Olow, a prominent Mogadishu-based businessman, who owns part of the cement shipment.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200509/27/eng20050927_211076.html

Amidst growing capabilities of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of sea piracy, India has activated its first listening post on foreign soil that will keep an eye on ship movements in the Indian Ocean, India’s defence web said.

The website said that one of the aims of the key monitoring station established in Northern Madagascar with complete radars and surveillance gear to interpret maritime communication is to monitor “piracy and terrorist activities.”

Suspected Islamic militants beheaded four Philippine Marines who were involved in the search for a kidnapped Italian priest, the military has said.

Nine other troops were injured and ten were missing after the gun battle Tuesday near Tipo-Tipo town on Basilan island, a known hideout for militants from Abu Sayyaf and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The troops had been dispatched to the area to check reports that Italian priest Giancarlo Bossi, 57, had been sighted with his captors there, said Marine spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ariel Caculitan.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22055021-1702,00.html

From M&C:

Modern-day piracy is threatening aid supplies to more than one million people in war-torn Somalia, experts of the United Nations (UN) and the London-based International Maritime Organization (IMO) warned today (July 10).

A wave of attacks on ships in recent months had caused an exodus of shipping firms willing to carry supplies to Somalia for the World Food Programme, threatening the main aid route the strife-torn country in the Horn of Africa.

The heads of the IMO and the World Food Programme (WFP) said in London Tuesday that they intended to ask the UN Security Council to urge Somalia’s government to allow foreign warships to enter its waters to act against the pirates.

According to a Jamestown Foundation report  a variety of observers around the globe, the chances for a terrorist attack in the Straits of Malacca remain high. The fact that the Straits play such a key role in the global economy increases this probability. Not only do the Straits see passage of approximately 90% of East Asia’s oil supply coming from the Middle East, they also witness expanding numbers of containerships carrying manufactured goods from East Asia back to the Middle East, Europe and—via the so-called “all-water route”—across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. In short, the narrows, running largely between peninsular Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, represent one of the world’s most vital economic arteries and, for that reason alone, cannot be doubted as the target of terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda. Despite the risks, governments in the region have been slow to improve counter-terrorism coordination in the Straits.

http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2373531

From The Hindu:

Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday vowed to “wipe out” the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from the island nation’s Northern Province like the way his Government did the “job” in Eastern Province.

http://www.hindu.com/2007/07/10/stories/2007071054331300.htm

From the Japan Times:

Japanese-operated ships have been targeted by pirates in Southeast Asia this year, but most of the attacks were foiled, according to recent data compiled by a piracy monitoring center in Singapore and other maritime sources.

The center for the Japan-initiated Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia, or ReCAAP, publishes monthly and quarterly details of pirate attacks on its Web site.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070710b2.html

The Philippine Sun Star reports that a military official said government forces are checking information from civilians who claimed to have seen kidnapped Italian priest, Giancarlo Bossi in the province of Basilan.

However, 1st Marine Brigade commander, Ramiro Alivio said the information will be treated as “raw” until it can be confirmed by the military.

China just annouced that it is getting into building LNG ships. On the surface this seems to be good news for those on the side of expanding the use of liquified natural gas and building more and more facilities and ships to haul and process the stuff. But what about the rest of the world’s population?

What I wonder about is who is handling quality control in the country and what will it  mean to a city when one of these monsters pulls into their port. If you recall this is the same country that was responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of family pets because it sold tainted ingredients for pet food.

If killing a few pets isn’t a big deal, then how about killing a few hundred people now and maybe a few thousand down the line?

It has just come to light that 94 people have died in Panama after taking medicine laced with diethylene glycol, the same stuff found in antifreeze and brake fluid. Another 293 deaths are still under investigation.

This was no accident. People at a Chinese company lied by fraudulently passing it off as 99.5 percent pure glycerin, a sweetener commonly used in drugs. It was sold to a Spanish company, which in turn sold it to Panama’s Medicom SA, which sold it to a government laboratory that added it to cough syrup, antihistamine tablets, calamine lotion and rash ointment.

These Chinese business people had to know that if consumed their product would kill. Apparently they didn’t care. I wonder if another Chinese company that is building a 70,000-ton LNG tanker will give any more thought to human life than those who may have killed hundreds in Panama, and who knows where else, with their poison.

I wouldn’t want to live or work in any port city where that first Chinese-built LNG tanker pulls in holding enough liquified natural gas to incinerate the entire place should they have taken short cuts or just didn’t care that much about quality control, as seems to be the case, at least in their food and medicine industries. — John Chadwell