Oil is now so cheap even pirates aren’t stealing it any more
Oil tankers are enormous, and ships that carry expensive cargo are designed to be difficult to board. Stealing can mean hijacking the original tanker, disabling its tracking devices, taking it to a location where it can’t be spotted, and
transferring thousands of heavy barrels to a different vessel that can then be sailed away. Stealing crude also means finding a buyer for it, or else getting involved in the messy and dangerous business of illegal refining.
Over the past six months, the price of oil has plunged due to a global oversupply. And for some pirates, it’s just not worth stealing it any more.
“With oil at a low bottom price of below $30 per barrel, piracy is no longer such a profitable business as it was when prices hit $106 a barrel a few years ago,” said Florentina Adenike Ukonga, the executive secretary of the Gulf of Guinea Commission—a regional body that exists to promote cooperation between West African states, many of which export oil via tanker—in an interview with Bloomberg.
Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-now-cheap-even-pirates-120218185.html
Oil tankers are enormous, and ships that carry expensive cargo are designed to be difficult to board. Stealing can mean hijacking the original tanker, disabling its tracking devices, taking it to a location where it can’t be spotted, and
transferring thousands of heavy barrels to a different vessel that can then be sailed away. Stealing crude also means finding a buyer for it, or else getting involved in the messy and dangerous business of illegal refining.
Over the past six months, the price of oil has plunged due to a global oversupply. And for some pirates, it’s just not worth stealing it any more.
“With oil at a low bottom price of below $30 per barrel, piracy is no longer such a profitable business as it was when prices hit $106 a barrel a few years ago,” said Florentina Adenike Ukonga, the executive secretary of the Gulf of Guinea Commission—a regional body that exists to promote cooperation between West African states, many of which export oil via tanker—in an interview with Bloomberg.
Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-now-cheap-even-pirates-120218185.html
