U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 12 December 2021 - 19 January 2022

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report, 15 September - 13 October 2021

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 5 March - 1 April 2020 and HORN OF AFRICA/GULF OF GUINEA/SOUTHEAST ASIA Weekly Piracy Update for 26 March - 1 April 2020

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

Missing from these reports due to its recency is the saga of the Venezuelan "coast guard" vessel and its unsuccessful encounter with an unarmed, albeit ice hardened, cruise ship as set out here:

A Venezuelan navy coastal patrol boat sank in the Caribbean after allegedly ramming a cruise ship that it had ordered to change direction.

The owners of the Portuguese-flagged RCGS Resolute said the naval vessel Naiguata also fired shots in an "act of aggression in international waters”.

The collision left the cruise ship, which has a reinforced hull for sailing in icy waters, with only minor damage.

Venezuela accused the Resolute of an act of "aggression and piracy".

Also previously addressed here.

U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) Report 19 November - 19 December 2018 and HORN OF AFRICA/GULF OF GUINEA/ SOUTHEAST ASIA: Piracy Analysis and Warning Weekly (PAWW) Report for 13 - 19 December 2018

U.S. Office of Naval Intell... by on Scribd

U.S. Office of Naval Intell... by on Scribd

Venezuela: Gun trafficking charges dropped against U.S. merchant captain, ship and crew

US Ship Captain, Crew Free After Venezuela Drops Trafficking Charges:

A U.S. cargo ship and its crew are expected to head home Monday or Tuesday, after being held for over a week by Venezuelan authorities on suspicion of arms trafficking.

Venezuelan authorities dropped arms-trafficking charges against the 14 American crew members and the captain of the Ocean Atlas on Sunday.

Captain, Jeffrey Michael Raider, 45, of Texas, was arrested Aug. 29 when they found weapons during a search. The remaining 14 members of the cargo vessel were required to stay aboard the ship during the captain's detention.

The ship had the proper documentation.

I'm sure it was all just an unpleasant misunderstanding.

The problems of carrying weapons, even anti-piracy" weapons into port or territorial waters is one that shipowners and crews need to bear in mind as not every country appreciates their introduction.

This is especially true of anti-U.S. tin-pot quasi-dictators who can't figure out that if the U.S. really wanted to run guns into his country, there are about a billion better ways than putting 3 of them in a merchant ship . . .

Venezuela to export gasoline to Iran

It's all about the gasoline!

Acting to help Iran mitigate possible nuclear sanctions and, incidentally confirming the need for such sanctions, Venezuela to export gasoline to Iran:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sealed an agreement to export 20,000 barrels per day of gasoline to Iran, state TV reported Monday. The deal would give Tehran a cushion if the West carries out threats of fuel sanctions over Iran's nuclear program.

The two countries signed the agreement late Sunday during a visit by Chavez, who pledged to deepen ties with Iran and stand together against what he called the imperialist powers of the world.

Western leaders have threatened to impose further sanctions against it should Iran refuse to bend to deadlines for talks aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear activities. One idea that has been touted, though not yet formally proposed, is to cut off exports of gas station-ready fuel to Iran.

One of Iran's weakest points is its dependence on fuel imports. Despite its vast oil resources, it lacks the refinery capacity to meet its own demand and must buy vast quantities of commercial-ready fuel on the open market.

The Venezuelan fuel could help Iran if such sanctions are imposed.

"On the basis of a strategic decision, it was agreed to export 20,000 barrels a day of gasoline from Venezuela to Iran," state TV quoted Chavez as saying at the end of his visit. The fuel shipments will begin in October.

Iran has managed to ride out the limited sanctions so far without serious hardships, although lack of significant foreign investment has left the economy stuck in low gear for years.
***
Iranian leaders — particularly President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — have repeatedly insisted that Iran would never uranium enrichment, which the U.N. has demanded it halt. The process can produce fuel for a reactor or a warhead.

One Russian's View? "Russia's fist in America's belly"

What some see as a training opportunity, others see as a major statement of Russian power as Russia's fist in America's belly:

In terms of military might, Peter the Great and Admiral Chabanenko exceed all the fleets in North and South America combined — withstanding U.S. ships. Peter the Great has strategic nuclear arms, and that's enough in and of itself to sink two or three enemy cruisers.

Of course, Russia's admirals are categorically against discussing these issues for political reasons. Only one sailor who asked to go unnamed answered my question directly about whether Peter the Great has nuclear arms. "Who'll let the ship go to sea without them!?" he said

Of course, the Russians are aligning themselves with Hugo Chavez, oil potentate and gold mine grabber.

My mother used to tell me about being judged by the company you keep.

Have a nice cruise, comrades.

ICC CCS Weekly Piracy Report (to 22 July 08)

ICC Commercial Crime Services Weekly Piracy Report (to 22 July 08) can be found here. Highlights:

***
-05.07.2008: 1900 LT: 10:45N - 063:00W, 8 nm off Puerto Santos, Venezuela. Six pirates armed with guns and knives in a pirogue fishing boat, one dressed in military uniform and two with facemasks approached a yacht underway. The skipper rammed into the fishing boat but the pirates managed to board the yacht. They tied the two-crew members and pointed guns to their heads. They shot and stabbed the skipper’s dog. The pirates stole equipment, property, and left. One crew injured.

-20.07.2008: 0011 UTC: 13:16.99N - 050:03.47E, SE of Al Mukalla, Gulf of Aden. Pirates boarded a bulk carrier underway. The ship activated SSAS and sent voice message to the coalition forces indicating pirates on board. The owners are unable to contact the ship and suspect all communication equipments have been damaged. There are 21 crew onboard the ship. Further details are awaited. (See here)
***
-18.07.2008: 0720 UTC: 12:47.5N - 051:02.0E, Gulf of Aden. Heavily armed pirates, in two, six-meter long yellow craft, attempted to board a container ship underway from the aft. Master took evasive manoeuvres, raised alarm and crew mustered with pressurised fire hoses. Upon seeing crew alertness, pirates aborted the attempt.

-15.07.2008: 1030 LT: 13:31N - 049:11E, 44 nm Off Yemen, Gulf of Aden. D/O onboard a chemical tanker underway noticed about 10 - 12 pirates in two blue and white coloured speedboats at a distance of 2.5 nm. The speedboats suddenly approached the tanker and fired upon her. D/O raised alarm, sounded whistle and crew mustered. Pirates noticed crew alertness and reduced their speed and aborted the attempted boarding.

UPDATE: revised maps X off Venezuela is approximate yacht attack. Box off Somalia is area of all the indicated attacks.

UPDATE2: IMB Piracy Map for 2008 attacks/attempts in the Gulf of Aden:
Hmmm. Is there a pattern?

The trouble down South American way

The Wall Street Journal's The FARC Files is a very good piece on the mischief Hugo Chavez and his pals are up to - financed by oil and drug money:

Colombia's precision air strike 10 days ago, on a guerrilla camp across the border in Ecuador, killed rebel leader Raúl Reyes. That was big. But the capture of his computer may turn out to be a far more important development in Colombia's struggle to preserve its democracy.

Reyes was the No. 2 leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has been at war with the Colombian government for more than four decades. His violent demise is a fitting end to a life devoted to masterminding atrocities against civilians. But the computer records expose new details of the terrorist strategy to bring down the government of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, including a far greater degree of collaboration between the FARC and four Latin heads of government than had been previously known. In addition to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, they are President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega and Bolivian President Evo Morales.
***
Sure enough, when the Colombian national police retrieved Reyes's body from Ecuador, it also brought back several computers from the camp. Documents on those laptops show that Mr. Chávez and Reyes were not only ideological comrades, but also business partners and political allies in the effort to wrest power from Mr. Uribe.

The tactical discussions found in the documents are hair-raising enough. They show that the FARC busies itself with securing arms and explosives, selling cocaine, and otherwise financing its terrorism operations through crime. In a memo last month, for example, a rebel leader discussed the FARC's efforts to secure 50 kilos of uranium, which it hoped to sell to generate income. In the same note, there is a reference to "a man who supplies me material for the explosive we are preparing, his name is Belisario and he lives in Bogotá . . ."

Though it is far from clear, Colombian national police speculated from this that a dirty bomb could be in the making. An April 2007 letter to the FARC secretariat lays out the terrorists' effort to acquire missiles from Lebanon. When Viktor Bout, allegedly one of the world's most notorious arms traffickers, was arrested in Thailand on Thursday, the Spanish-language press reported that he was located thanks to the Reyes computer files.

The maneuvers of thugs seeking power are no surprise. The more significant revelation is the relationship between the FARC and Mr. Chávez, Mr. Correa, Mr. Morales and Mr. Ortega. All four, it turns out, support FARC violence and treachery against Mr. Uribe.

According to the documents, Mr. Chávez's friendship with the FARC dates back at least as far as 1992, when he was in jail for an attempted coup d'etat in Venezuela and the FARC sent him $150,000. Now he is returning the favor, by financing the terrorist group with perhaps as much as $300 million. But money is the least important of the Chávez gifts. He is also using his presidential credentials on behalf of the FARC.

UPDATE: See Betsy Newmark's post on The "New Israel" of South America.

Cheap gasoline in Venezuela --but at a cost

Even the Guardian knows that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch and reports it here:

So while oil-importing nations appeal for relief (George Bush called in vain this week on Saudi Arabia to increase its output so as to bear down on prices), major exporters such as Venezuela bask in their immunity from the petroinflationary pain. Venezuela has the seventh-largest oil reserves in the world, and petrol is lavishly subsidised.

"If it gives us nothing else, at least the government lets us have our own petrol this cheap," said Padron, 44, revving her engine. "It may be crazy and have no logic, but I'm not complaining. Nobody is."

That is the problem. The subsidy warps the economy, drains government coffers, rips off the poor, pollutes the air and paralyses cities with traffic jams. Yet it is hugely popular and the government dares not end the insanity.

The phenomenon is common to oil producers such as Burma, Indonesia, Iran and Nigeria: their people feel cheap petrol is a birthright and tend to revolt if the price rises.

The era of $100 barrels has magnified the distortion, because governments are obliged to forfeit windfall revenues to divert ever-greater quantities of oil to domestic markets.

"It is difficult to go from this system to something more rational," said Mark Weisbrot, an economist with the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research. "People think they know how cheap the oil is, and that it is theirs. It is very deep in the culture."

Venezuela, a major oil producer which introduced the subsidy as a populist measure in the 1940s, is probably the most extreme case of a gas-guzzling dream becoming a policy nightmare.

A lack of rigs and other problems has reduced the output of the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, just as domestic consumption has soared to 780,000 barrels a day. The subsidy costs the government around £4.5bn annually. It also encourages a brisk trade in contraband petrol across the Colombian border, where prices are higher.

A consumer boom has doubled the number of cars on Venezuela's roads, with 500,000 sold last year alone. "None of the advertisements talk about fuel efficiency," said Daniel Guerra, the manager of a Ferrari dealership in Caracas. "People have been spoiled for so long with the subsidy that when it comes time for a reality check they don't understand."

As a result, streets are filled with new SUVs, including Humvees, as well as wheezing 70s-era sedans, aggravating smog and gridlock.

Some economists call the subsidy "Hood Robin", because it steals from the poor and gives to the rich by favouring relatively wealthy car owners above the poor who rely on public transport.

President Hugo Chávez railed against it last year, going so far as to label the inequity "disgusting". He also chided western countries for consuming so much oil and depleting a non-renewable resource. The self-styled revolutionary socialist, however, has not followed through on his promise to raise prices at home.

Oil rig shortage? Sure, those greedy capitalist oil guys are leery of the big V:

Faced with a declining rig fleet in a tight global market for oil services, Venezuela is preparing a fresh licensing round to attract new drilling equipment and renew contracts for those on the ground, industry executives say.

But Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PVZ.YY) is increasingly slow about paying its contractors and insists on paying in a local currency that is difficult to convert into dollars, dampening interest in projects with the state oil firm.

PdVSA is still looking to hire a rig for the offshore Mariscal Sucre gas project, where the company first hoped to start drilling in mid-2006. Meantime, foreign operators are neck-deep in a contract overhaul, delaying some work at privately run fields until at least the second half of the year.

Contrary to PdVSA's intentions, industry watchers expect drilling activity to slow down this year, denting the country's production capacity at a time of rising costs at the state firm.

"I don't think you'll see a lot of new capital deployed down there by the operators, nor the service companies," Halliburton (KRY) Chief Financial Officer Christopher Gaut said in a Thursday web cast.

Halliburton provides drilling and waste management services to oil companies in Venezuela. Gaut said currency restrictions are a "constant struggle," and described other Latin American oil producers Brazil, Argentina and Mexico as better markets for growth.

This environment could jeopardize PdVSA's long-term plans to double production by 2012.

"PdVSA is running around trying to make sure rigs don't leave the country," said one industry executive. "We've got a downward trend since July that they are starting to notice."

Venezuela's oil rig fleet peaked at 76 in mid-2006, the highest number in operation since 1998, according to data by Baker Hughes, an oil services firm. Since last July, 13 oil have gone out of service, two last month. Active natural gas rigs also fell to 10 from 12 over the period.
***
President Hugo Chavez's socialist policies are partly to blame for declining activity. Last year, PdVSA forced service companies to include good works, such as building schools and clinics in impoverished oil production zones, as requirements for new contracts. The increased costs contributed to a number of null and void bidding rounds last year.

"There are no win-win deals out there," said an executive at a drilling company.

Even more so since there was a threat to "nationalize" rigs operated by outside oil firms:

Venezuela's threats to "nationalize" 18 oil rigs currently operated by outside firms sent a shock wave through the local oil services industry at a time these services are in high demand around the globe.

Executives at drilling firms said foreign rig operators could easily try and move equipment to other markets if the business environment worsens, hurting the country's ability to produce oil.

At the same time, Venezuela may be forced to lean on foreign oil service firms to keep the oil flowing until it follows through on plans to begin assembling rigs in country to help spawn a domestic oil services industry.

That means Venezuela may exempt from its nationalization drive some oil service company activities on which the country depends.

"This is something that took us all by surprise," said an executive at a U.S. firm that has several rigs operating in Venezuela. "Rigs will move to other contracts elsewhere in the world."

The International Energy Agency claims Venezuelan output has fallen to 2.35 million barrels a day, a million barrels a day less than what PdVSA claims it is producing. Ironically, Ramirez's comments come at a time PdVSA is putting together a tender for up to 70 rigs, a plan observers said was not feasible even before Ramirez's rhetoric over the weekend.

"This is obviously impossible. There aren't that many rigs available in the whole world," said another Venezuela-based drilling executive.

Of course, dwindling oil production hasn't slowed Chavez's profligate military spending:

The top U.S. military officer said on Thursday he was concerned by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's purchases of military equipment, saying they could harm efforts to build greater stability in Latin America.
***
A former head of the U.S. Navy who took on the top U.S. military post October, Mullen mentioned both high-performance planes and submarines as items of particular concern.

"To the degree that those capabilities come into theater, they certainly are of great concern not just to Colombia... but to the region and in fact very much to the United States," he told reporters in Bogota.

Venezuela purchased 24 Sukhoi fighter jets and 100,000 Kalashnikov AK-103 assault rifles from Russia in 2006 and has talked about purchasing submarines, equipment Chavez says is needed to protect Venezuela from any "imperialist" attack.

I bet he sleeps with a night light, too, to keep the "imperialists" away.

Iran: Mullah mischief in Central America

Time to dust off the Monroe Doctrine? Or just more "Mullah Mischief/" Iran's push into Nicaragua a worry for U.S., allies:

As part of a new partnership with Nicaragua's Sandinista President Daniel Ortega, Iran and its Venezuelan allies plan to help finance a $350 million deep-water port at Monkey Point on the wild Caribbean shore, and then plow a connecting "dry canal" corridor of pipelines, rails and highways across the country to the populous Pacific Ocean. Iran recently established an embassy in Nicaragua's capital.

In feeling threatened by Iran's ambitions, the people of Monkey Point have powerful company. The Iranians' arrival in Nicaragua comes as the Bush administration and some European allies hold the threat of war over Iran to force an end to its uranium enrichment program and alleged help to anti-U.S. insurgents in Iraq.

What worries state department officials, former national security officials and counterterrorism researchers is that, if attacked, Iran could stage strikes on American or allied interests from Nicaragua, deploying the Iranian terrorist group Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard operatives already in Latin America. Bellicose threats by Iran's clerical leadership to hit American interests worldwide if attacked, by design or not, heighten the anxiety.

"The bottom line is if there is a confrontation with Iran, and Iran gets bombed, I have absolutely no doubt that Iran is going to lash out globally," said John R. Schindler, a veteran former counterintelligence officer and analyst for the National Security Agency.

"The Iranians have that ability, particularly from South America. Hezbollah has fronts all over Latin America. That is not new. But it's certainly something we're starting to care about now."

American policymakers already had been fretting in recent years over Tehran's successful forging of diplomatic relations, direct air routes and embassy swaps with populist South American governments that abhor the U.S., such as President Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. But Iran's latest move places it just a few porous borders from Texas, where illegal Nicaraguan laborers routinely travel.

Venezuela: Chavez does "Bananas"

Headline: Call him cuckoo -- Chavez changes time in Venezuela :

President Hugo Chavez wants Venezuelan clocks turned back half an hour and he wants it done in record time -- next Monday.

"I don't care if they call me crazy, the new time will go ahead, let them call me whatever they want," Chavez said on his weekly TV show. "I'm not to blame. I received a recommendation and said I liked the idea."

The shift will allow children to wake up for school in daylight instead of before sunrise, Chavez said.

That may seem reasonable to many Venezuelans but ordering the change with little notice and scant public education has raised questions over how much thought was given to the plan.

It also highlights how the anti-U.S. president's governing style can sometimes be eccentric, improvised and rushed in his self-styled revolution to turn one of the world's biggest oil exporters into a socialist state.

Chavez himself has not had time to get to grips with the practicalities of the clock shift.

In his live show, he called on his brother, the education minister, so that the two men could explain the measure. But they mistakenly told Venezuelans to move their clocks forward at midnight on Sunday, when the policy is to move them back.

Chavez dismissed criticism that moving the time only a half hour was quirky, questioning why the world had to follow a scheme of hourly divisions that he said was dictated by the imperial United States.

Reminds me of the old Woody Allen movie Bananas when the revolution comes and the new dictator, Esposito, announces some new policies:

Esposito: From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old!
Fielding Mellish: What's the Spanish word for straitjacket?