Will the high seas become terrorism’s newest staging ground?, Part 2

The other potential chokepoint of opportunity for terrorists is the Malacca Straits, the 550 mile long waterway connecting the Pacific and Indian Oceans. 50,000 ships pass through the Straits each year carrying 25-percent of the world’s oil. Last year, the Singapore Navy reported that it received information that an unnamed terrorist group was planning to unleash attacks in the Straits upon tankers and other large vessels. Two miles wide at its narrowest point and with over double the traffic volume of the BAM, it may prove to be the more lucrative of the two bottlenecks. Indonesia and Malaysia have increased military patrols in the Straits.

Members of the Tamil Tigers Sri Lankan separatist group are suspected of joining up with Somali pirate gangs to facilitate pirate attacks near Minicoy Island which is only approximately 250 miles from India. As the theatre of attack spreads farther and farther from the Horn of Africa, it is not inconceivable that the shipping high risk area may spread from as far east as the Malacca Straits to the Suez Canal.

Perhaps the most lucrative target of opportunity would be the hijacking of a liquid natural gas tanker, or LNG. At nearly 1,000 feet long, those ships can carry in excess of 35,000,000 gallons of LNG. That’s nearly 80 times the power of the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Conceivably, terrorists could hijack an LNG ship and detonate it in a populated area. In fact, numerous public officials including the Boston Mayor and Massachusetts State House Speaker raised objections to allowing LNG tankers to arrive from Yemen; the first tanker berthed in the nearby Everett terminal on February 22, 2010.

There is debate about just how destructive an attempted explosion upon an LNG tanker would be. Some experts say that because of a double hull and nearly impenetrable storage tanks, it would be difficult to breach the cargo holds; it might be necessary to use a missile which is beyond the present arsenal of active pirate gangs limited to RPGs and AK-47s. Therefore, these experts believe that LNG ships do not make good targets.

Other experts say that even if the risk of an explosion is not great, the more realistic threat is of a 3,000 degree fireball killing tens of thousands of people within a half mile radius. The Everett terminal was shut down after 9-11 and for the 2004 Democratic Convention because of potential terrorist fears.

According to the Sandia National Laboratory, there are four ways that terrorists could use an LNG ship as a WMD: by ramming it into a stationary object, placing a mine in front of its path, ramming it with explosives (USS Cole attack) and hijacking it and sailing it into a population center.

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