Somali Pirates amass $150m in ransom

Nairobi: Somali pirates have collected more than $150 million (Dh551 million) in ransoms over the past year, Kenya's foreign affairs minister said on Friday, calling on ship owners not to pay when their vessels are hijacked.

In the past two weeks Somalia's increasingly brazen pirates have seized eight vessels, including a huge Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil.

Several hundred crew are now in the hands of Somali pirates. "We are advised that in the last 12 months, ransom to the excess of $150 million has been paid to these criminals and that is why they are becoming more and more audacious in their activities," Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula said.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said that the Saudi government was not and would not negotiate with pirates, but what the ship's owners did was up to them.

Meanwhile, the world's largest oil tanker company warned that it may divert cargo shipments, which would boost costs up to 40 per cent.

Frontline Ltd, which ferries five to 10 tankers of crude a month through the treacherous Gulf of Aden, said it was negotiating a change of shipping routes with some of its customers, including oil giants Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.

Martin Jensen, Frontline's acting chief executive, said that sending tankers around South Africa instead would extend the trip by 40 per cent.

Bermuda-based Frontline plans to make a decision whether to change shipping routes within a week, Jensen said. "It's not only our costs, but also those of the people who have a $100 million cargo on board," Jensen said.

"We're not going to make a unilateral decision so we've been debating this with our customers."