Oil Piracy, OPEC, Saudi Arabia, You and Me

With the highjacking of the Saudi oil tanker SIRRIUS STAR and its 2 million barrels of oil the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia Prince Saud al-Faisal was moved to comment “Piracy like terrorism is a disease which is against everybody and everybody must address it together.” Spoken in the best Saudi parlance to which the most generous translation one could ascribe is, “Uncle Sam (with 20 plus ships operating in the Persian Gulf to east Africa including three super-carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Ronald Reagan and USS Theodore Roosevelt) let me hold your jacket while you go ahead and tackle this mess for us, and when you’ve done what you’ve had to do, don’t forget to thank us for helping you forgo a cleaning bill for your jacket.”


The highjacking of a Saudi 318,000 ton VLCC (Very Large Cargo Carrier) came after a series of chastising pronouncements from OPEC evidencing indignation at the recently swift setback in the price of oil.
– In October OPEC members agreed to reduce supplies by 1.5 million barrels per day from November 1, or about 5 percent of their then daily production.

Huffington Post