From press release of Cambridge Consultants:

The latest piracy statistics released by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) Piracy Reporting Centre (PRC) point to a significant increase in attacks by pirates in the first nine months of 2008. According to a PRC press release, reported acts of piracy committed up to late October 2008 have included 115 vessels boarded, 31 vessels hijacked, and 23 vessels fired upon, seeing a total of 581 crew members taken hostage, nine kidnapped, nine killed and seven missing, presumed dead. The highly publicised seizures in November only highlight further the extent of this threat to the shipping industry.

Holographic radar is a non-scanning, continuously tracking 3D radar that provides persistent illumination of its field of view and can resolve and measure an object’s motion at fine scale, as well as its range and direction. It is currently being scaled up for use on wind farms to offer infill coverage for air traffic control and military surveillance radars, but if adapted appropriately for a marine surveillance application and placed at prominent points on a vessel’s superstructure, it would enable a crew to detect small boats and take evasive maneuvres or trigger self-defense mechanisms to repel a pirate attack.

“Current ship-based radar systems are designed to prevent collisions at sea, or to detect threats from the sky,” continues Oswald. “They do this by scanning the surveillance zone, emitting a pulsed beam and detecting the reflections from moving objects. This form of radar is simply not suited to close quarters surveillance of an environment that, like the sea, moves and changes shape. Our holographic radar technology is designed for exactly this sort of application.”

Satlynx, a subsidiary of GE and provider of two-way satellite broadband communication services, announced extension of a range of its Maritime VSAT services across wide portfolio of platforms including SCPC, and shared and dedicated TDMA hubs. Based on different satellites operating at Ku, extended-Ku and C-band frequencies, footprints are extensive across the Europe, Middle East and Africa region and include an area of the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Oman. Inland, coverage includes the waterways of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Global coverage is currently provided via SCPC technology on dedicated bandwidth. Extended range of two way communications enhances maritime security at high seas.

Department of Homeland Security is testing buoy sensor grid technology as a part of its Small Vessel Security Program. The buoys are connected into grid with nodes 20 miles apart from each other and anchored within 200 miles offshore. The “sonobuoys” detect signals made by vessels and passes information to the basestation. Information is analyzed and, if further action is necessary, transmitted to the Coast Guard or law enforcement agencies.

The buoy sensors analyze acoustic signatures to pick up suspicious patterns. So far two companies got contracts to develop buoy grids - Advanced Acoustic Concepts (AAC) and LewTech Company. The target price tag per sensor-quipped buoy is $15,000.

Chakib Khelil, OPEC’s president, delivered on Monday a gloomy forecast: economic factors could drive oil to $200. Terrorist attack of the oil tanker at one of the oil shipping choke points may put world to the brink of economic crisis. A handful of oil choke points are of strategic importance for the global energy supply. Geographical constraints make them vulnerable to the terrorist attack.

What would be the daily costs of congestion in the strategic oil choke points at current oil prices approaching $120 a barrel?

• Congestion of the Strait of Hormuz will cost $ 2 Bln a day in undelivered oil costs
• Congestion of the Strait of Malacca will cost $ 1.4 Bln a day in undelivered oil costs
• Congestion of the Suez Canal and Sumed Pipeline will cost $ 0.5 Bln a day in undelivered oil costs
• Congestion of the Bosporus will cost $ 0.4 Bln a day in undelivered oil costs
• Congestion of the Bab el-Mandeb will cost $ 0.36 Bln a day in undelivered oil costs
• Congestion of the Panama Canal will cost $ 60 Mln a day in undelivered oil costs

However, should any of these events happen, the price of oil will jump above $200 a barrel.

Sources:
Federal Efforts Needed to Address Challenges in Preventing and Responding to Terrorist Attacks on Energy Commodity Tankers, Maritime Security, GAO Report, 2007