Pirates spur India coal buyers towards distant lands

Indian coal buyers struggling with Somali pirate attacks on ships from South Africa find taking longer routes of limited use and are turning to Australia and Russia for fuel.

Indian coal buyers struggling with Somali pirate attacks on ships from South Africa find taking longer routes of limited use and are turning to Australia and Russia for fuel to avoid the Indian Ocean completely.

Somali pirates,whose hijacking of oil tankers,bulk cargo ships and fishing vessels costs world trade billions of dollars a year are growing bolder.

Given the amounts they have made recently,I would anticipate ever-better armed and trained pirate crews at the top end as well as a proliferation of wannabes at the lower end, said J Peter Pham,Africa director with US think tank the Atlantic Council.

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In addition,the use of NATO ships to enforce a UN embargo on Libya will stretch anti-piracy efforts. NATO & EU NAVFOR were struggling with finding some slack to send some ships after pirates in the deep Indian Ocean. After Libya,thats not going to happen, said Michael Frodl,founder and head of maritime risks consultancy C-LEVEL.

India has a growing,structural need for imported coal to fuel a power generation boom,unlike China which imports only when domestic prices fall below international levels. Indias imports could leap 70 per cent in 2011/12 to 142 million tonnes,the coal minister said in March.

Indias need for coal is clear but where it comes from is more flexible. For the past year 30 per cent of South Africas 60-63 million tonnes of coal exports have been shipped to India. But the rising cost of piracy is forcing Indian traders to look elsewhere and this could hurt South African exports.

Somali pirates,rather than Zimbabwes political instability,pose the biggest threat to Southern Africas security,South African Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Tuesday.

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A fresh development this year has been pirates capture of commercial ships and crews at gunpoint and use of torture to force crews to operate the vessels as motherships.

The use of large ships in this role gives the pirates reach across the whole Indian Ocean and gives them an all-weather capability that they just didnt have a few months ago, said Peter Hinchliffe,secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping.

The Indian Navy has responded to the growing threat by trying to flush pirates away from Indias west coast.