The Sirius Star left Saudi Arabia last November laden with oil and was heading towards the United States when pirates struck off the coast of Kenya. With about one quarter of Saudi's total daily production onboard, the Sirius Star was lying low in water and travelling slowly. She was an easy target. And a valuable target: her cargo was worth more than $100 million (Dh367.3m).

Seizing a moving ship is dangerous work, particularly when she is 450 kilometres offshore. If the small, inflatable attack boats got caught in her wake or were bumped by the hull, the pirates would have drowned. The stakes were high but the rewards were also enormous: the pirates are thought to have ransomed the ship for $3m.

However, it appears that there really is no honour among thieves because there are reports that a fight broke out after the pirate gang had been paid. The body of one suspected pirate washed ashore a few days later along with a plastic bag containing more than $150,000 in cash. My friends in the security industry tell me this is quite common. Apparently, the only thing more dangerous than paying pirates a ransom is sticking around afterwards to see how they split it up.

The taking of the Sirius Star, the largest ship ever to have been hijacked, highlights just how dangerous the waters off East Africa and the Gulf of Aden have become. Add in the lawless waters around West Africa and the crime-infested seas of some parts of South-East Asia and it is clear that piracy is a serious threat. There were 111 reported attacks last year, 42 of which were successful and netted up to $50m in ransom money. Security sources believe that the number of successful attacks this year is already double the 2008 total.

The word piracy has become almost cartoonish in the developed world now that our own seas experience little more than bad weather. Think pirate and Johnny Depp comes to mind as Captain Jack Sparrow, not desperate men in rickety boats carrying AK-47s.

The taking of the Sirius Star shows just how serious a problem piracy has become and oil companies, ship owners and insurers are seeking a solution. Europe, the United States and a number of other countries have sent warships to the Gulf of Aden to patrol the dangerous waters near Somalia, which is home to many of the region's pirates. But this armada faces a daunting task as there are more than two million square miles of sea and even the biggest warship becomes an invisible speck in such an enormous space.

In recent months, ships have called in hijack SOSs to their nearest warship only for it to take over half an hour for a helicopter to reach them, by which time the battle is long since over. Other solutions are clearly needed.

Some ship owners have installed water cannons, dazzling lasers and sonic weapons to knock attackers off course. Apparently the sonic weapons are rather ineffectual but water cannons can be surprisingly useful against a small boat that is already being buffeted by big waves.

Other ships have hired security guards but this is an area fraught with difficulty. There are legal ramifications arriving in port with men armed with machine guns and there is also a fear that the presence of armed guards could escalate the battle with the pirates. Also, do we really want lots of high velocity projectiles flying around ships containing hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil or liquid natural gas?

The cost of having extra personnel on board and/or defensive weapons such as a dazzle laser is also high, and is probably higher than the reduction in insurance premiums given for having anti-piracy measures onboard.

Fortunately, the most effective tactic is also the simplest: run away. It is extremely difficult and very dangerous to board a ship that is travelling at more than 20 knots and taking evasive action, but it takes large supertankers a long time to increase their normal cruising speed.

What is required, therefore, is greater ability to detect a threat and buy a ship's captain more time. Unfortunately, the radar on a commercial ship is usually directional [forward facing] and has a range of up to only five kilometres. The rest of the ocean is typically monitored by a man with binoculars. Small, fast attackers can, therefore, be on top of a large ship before anybody has noticed.

One of the priorities is a better radar system and BAE Systems, Europe's largest defence company, has said it will begin trials with BP next year to test beyond-the-horizon sensors. The company is also looking to provide military-grade software designed to determine whether boats in the vicinity are on an attack course or are merely fishing or going about their legitimate business. This type of technology is likely to be a lot more effective than installing armed guards on every supertanker.

However, if we are looking to stop piracy off the coast of Africa we have to address the root causes of the problem. Somalia is a failed state. Its people are desperate and that is why they are willing to head out into the ocean in leaking boats in search of booty. The situation is made worse by irresponsible fishermen from other countries taking advantage of Somalia's lawlessness to scoop up huge quantities of sea life. No wonder Somalia's fishermen have had to find alternative uses for their boats.

The cancer that has already destroyed Somalia is spreading across the sea but we cannot allow lawlessness to become the norm for the world's oceans. World trade has taken enough of a battering in the past year and the last thing we need is for piracy to return us to the era of privateers on the Spanish Main. For economic reasons as well as social ones, we cannot ignore failed states such as Somalia. 


- The writer is Business Correspondent for The Times of London

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