Pirates attacked heavy lift ship TEAL at Conakry Anchorage in Guinea July 8, 2016 at 12:20 by Mikhail Voytenko
Earlier this week, according to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre, six robbers in a boat armed with machine guns and knives boarded an anchored heavy lift vessel at Conakry Anchorage in Guinea. Vessel believed to be the Boskalis ship TEAL , according to Heavy Lift heavyliftpfi.com Edition:
03.07.2016: 0450 LT: Posn: 09:23.6N – 013:41.9W, Conakry Anchorage, Guinea.
Six robbers in a boat armed with machine guns and knives boarded an anchored heavy lift vessel. They attacked the duty O/S causing injuries and took the 2/O hostage. They opened fire to threaten the crew members and damaged the accommodation. Under gun threat, they robbed the crew members of their cash and personal belongings before escaping. Master tried to contact the port control, but received no response. The incident was reported to Port Authorities through the local agents. After an hour a security boat came to the location.
Comment: situation with information on piracy attacks remains kind of stupid – IMB stubbornly continues its’ policy of hiding attacked vessels’ details, and shipping community has to find information elsewhere. IMB is not up to its’ responsibility to inform the industry, not that it bothers IMB, of course.
As for GoG piracy, new trends are already accentuated – pirates seem to be not interested in oil theft any more, thanks to oil cost dive. But piracy itself, considering decreasing oil incomes in Nigeria, is doomed to grow, because oil is the main source of country’s budget. Main piracy targets are crew kidnapping, crew’s and ship’s valuables, and valuable cargoes, first of all cargoes on container ships.
Voytenko Mikhail