Hunt of the Sea Wolves

Bloomberg

The cost of piracy insurance has increased as much as 20-fold after attacks on shipping off the Horn of Africa doubled in the first quarter, insurance broker Marsh said.

Attacks on large commercial vessels such as the Sirius Star, a Saudi oil supertanker that was released in January, almost two months after it was hijacked with a cargo of 2 million barrels of oil, have spurred premiums and demand for coverage.

Piracy “is a pretty challenging piece of risk to underwrite,” Marcus Baker, head of marine insurance at Marsh in London, said in a telephone interview. “These pirates are attacking up to 700 miles off shore.”

Read story at Bloomberg

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Pirate Attacks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.