LONDON — An 1,100-foot supertanker carrying Kuwaiti oil to the United States was seized by pirates off eastern Oman yesterday, the first hijacking of a vessel that size since April.
The Irene SL has 17 Filipinos, seven Greeks, and a Georgian on board, according to the European Union’s antipiracy force. It was carrying about 1.98 million barrels of oil to the Gulf of Mexico, said its owner, Enesel.
“The vessel was attacked by armed men in skiffs,’’ Enesel said in an e-mailed statement.
The Irene SL was heading for the Suez Canal, the Egyptian waterway connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, according to EU Navfor.
Pirates hijacked a record 53 ships with 1,181 crew members in 2010, most off Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau in London. Average ransom rose to $5.4 million last year, compared with $150,000 in 2005, according to the One Earth Future Foundation, a nonprofit group.
This year, there have been 58 attacks reported worldwide as of Tuesday, 45 of which were off Somalia, Cyrus Mody, an IMB manager in London, said by phone yesterday. Just eight ships have been hijacked, he said.
Pirates are operating in new areas, including an attack 60 miles off Minicoy Island, Mody said. The island is across the Arabian Sea from Somalia, toward southwestern India.
The attacks are driving some tankers to sail around Africa rather than through the Suez, adding about 12 days to a journey from Saudi Arabia to Houston, said Luis Mateus, an analyst at Riverlake Shipping in Geneva.
Waiting for Twitter to feed in the latest...