Maritime terrorist act imminent, experts warn

ASia Pacific Port Focus ^ | Feb. 20, 2004 | Australia News

[FairOpinion]

A British Intelligence group has joined, visiting UN and Australian experts warning that world ports and shipping are vulnerable to a major terrorist attack

AL-QAEDA and its associates could be planning a "maritime spectacular," Dominick Donald of Aegis Research and Intelligence told a London security conference this week.

"If a boat that didn't cost $1,000 managed to devastate an oil tanker of that magnitude, imagine the extent of the danger that threatens the West's commercial lifeline, which is petroleum," he said.

Donald was referring to concerns raised since the attack on the oil tanker VLCC Limburg.

Addressing delegates at the Intermodal Petroleum Transportation event, Donald warned that the maritime sector was an obvious and easy target.

"Maritime attacks can deliver results, as 90 per cent of world trade moves by sea and maritime traffic has a number of vulnerable choke points [such as the pirate infested] Malacca Straits, Bab-el-Mandab and the Suez and Panama Canals".

Both the tanker and the cruise sectors are "iconic and economic", Donald said.

Meanwhile former Australian transport minister Peter Morris, who nows heads the International Commission on Shipping (ICONS), has also raised the alarm that shipping could be used as a weapon of mass destruction on Australian cities.

"Any one of the thousands of foreign ships which dock each year in Australian ports, particularly Sydney, has the potential to become a weapon of mass destruction," said Mr Morris.

"The ships themselves may be the weapon," he said. "They can carry enough innocent-looking cargo - fertiliser and diesel fuel - to become the biggest bomb ever detonated in an Australian capital city or major port in war or peace."

Mr Morris said the United States, the world's largest trading nation and a prime target for terrorists, has already acknowledged the danger.

"But Australia is making itself more vulnerable than most countries by suppressing Australian shipping in favour of foreign shipping and relying almost totally on offshore-registered ships where the real owners or operators of freighters, tankers, and bulk carriers are easily concealed."

Most ships calling in Australian ports are registered in countries like Liberia and Panama, which fail to even make a pretence of knowing the real ownership of those ships.

A recent bipartisan review of Australian shipping conducted by Mr Morris and the former Minister for Transport in the Howard government, John Sharp, warned that there was conflict between the Federal Government's two aims of cheap shipping and the simultaneous strengthening of our border protection.

Mr Morris insists the Howard Government maritime security legislation last year failed to establish procedures to protect Australian ports.

Maritime security concerns have been also raised by visiting United Nations IMO official Efthimios Mitropoulos.

The secretary general of the International Maritime Organisation told a Melbourne conference yesterday that the prospect of terrorists hijacking a large ship and exploding it in a major Australian port was a "real and present" danger.

[FairOpinion]

Another related article with additional details:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8735277%255E2702,00.html

UN warning on ship hijackings

By Cameron Stewart
February 20, 2004

THE prospect that terrorists could hijack a large ship and explode it in a major Australian port is a "real and present" danger, the chief maritime official of the United Nations has declared.

The warning comes as the Government struggles to meet new international requirements to safeguard the nation's 70 ports from possible terrorist attack.

The grim assessment was issued yesterday by Efthimios Mitropoulos, secretary-general of the UN's International Maritime Organisation, who is visiting Australia to discuss maritime issues.

Mr Mitropoulos said Australia's geographic isolation offered no protection against ship-borne terrorism.

"The threat here in Australia is as high as anywhere else in the world," Mr Mitropoulos told The Australian in Melbourne yesterday.

"You have a huge and sparsely populated coastline to protect. The danger is real, present and great, and we need to act with maximum speed. Can you imagine terrorists hijacking a cruise liner with 7000 people aboard?

"Can you imagine turning an oil tanker into a bomb, or sinking a cargo ship in a key shipping lane?"

The federal Government warned last month it faced an "enormous task" in trying to devise security plans for Australia's 70 ports.

"We are literally involved in a race against time," deputy Prime Minister John Anderson said.

The IMO is spearheading a global crackdown on maritime security amid fears terrorists could carry out a September 11-style attack using ships rather than planes.

The new requirements will force Australian ports to set up extra fencing, establish exclusion zones and beef up security surveillance.

Ships entering Australia will have to provide crew and cargo manifests, and those that do not could be turned away from port.

Mr Mitropoulos said the federal Government appeared to be fully aware of the dangers posed by maritime terrorism, and was doing its best to meet the deadline.

"I am encouraged by what is being done - Australia is taking this issue very seriously," he said.

But the disparate nature of international shipping made it difficult to safeguard against terrorists.

"Our experience with piracy has shown ships can be vulnerable at sea," Mr Mitropoulos said.

"Containers are often loaded in remote locations, away from modern security systems."

The federal Government has already provided $15 million to improve X-ray examination facilities for shipping containers at ports in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Fremantle.

Customs has also increased the number of patrols, and introduced 24-hour surveillance cameras at ports across the country.

[SAMWolf]

I'd be more concerned about a Liquified Natural Gas Carrier

[FairOpinion]

"Liquified Natural Gas Carrier"

==

I can see why -- these ships, if expoded in the "right" or "wrong" places, (depending on your point of view), can cause tremedous economic damage, in addition to the devastation and lives lost.

Mansoor Ijaz has been talking about this potential threat for some time now.

[Joe Hadenuf]

How big of an explosion would that create? Total kill zone within 4 miles?

[My Dog Likes Me]

I think when a LNG ship approaches Boston Harbor, they basically shut down the entire seaport.

[SAMWolf]

I couldn't find any info on a "blast radius" for a ship But I did find this:

If the cargo hold of an LNG tanker were ruptured, Mr. Cornwell and others agree the threat isn't an explosion. The concern is that the super-cold liquefied gas would pour out, form a pool on the water and burn. Such a fire would have to burn itself out and would be much more intense than either a crude-oil or gasoline fire.

The fire would also be so hot that people at a distance could get burned. According to Quest, if an accident ripped a hole 15 feet across in an LNG tanker the resulting fire would be so hot that a person 1,770 feet, or more than a quarter mile, away would suffer second-degree skin burn after a half minute.

Other estimates predict a much larger fire, although the assumptions differ about how much LNG would be released and how large the actual fire could become.
In January, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist Ronald Koopman calculated the hot zone would extend more than 4,200 feet, or about four-fifths of a mile, in a safety study of a proposed terminal in San Francisco Bay.

This isn't merely an academic disagreement. A more intense fire could place people in downtown Boston at risk, which is why Boston Mayor Thomas Menino vigorously opposed the reopening of the Everett terminal, which was briefly closed after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

http://www.flora.org/afo/forum/3900

and this:

The new gas receiving station would ship approximately one billion cubic feet of natural gas each day -- enough for twelve 500-megawatt power plants. This gas burned from this station alone would increase California's global warming emissions from natural gas by seventeen percent.

The magnitude of the project is staggering, and extremely dangerous. The station would require two to four tanks each holding five million cubic feet of liquified natural gas. This liquid would rapidly expand to three billion cubic feet of gas if for any reason the cooling system failed or the tank envelope were punctured. There is no way that this station would be built in the United States after September 11, 2001; it is simply too large a target. An explosion of the storage tanks would equal the detonation of 250 tons of TNT. Such a facility would never be built in California -- yet it's being built for Californians.

http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=2588

[SAMWolf]

I read somewhere a while back that an LNG ship exploding in a harbor could be devestating.

[BurbankKarl]

if they blow one up in Mexico...well, that was last nights thread...

[Joe Hadenuf]

Thanks for that.

[GeronL]

they need to stop this 'imminent' stuff

[Travis McGee]

It would also be easy to mix up anfo or other explosives, and put it in barrels of Pakistani "olive oil" or "honey" and load the barrels into a container, and detonate it via GPS or RC in a US port. OKC X 10, at least, in a busy terminal.... Or the container could be loaded onto a truck or train, and detonated as it passed through a city.

[My Dog Likes Me]

A LPG ship expoloding in the sea terminal at Boston would be devastating. Boston is kinda small and basically surrounded by water. I think it was built on a bog or something.

Anyway, it will take the loss of one major U.S. city before the government bans entry to all nondiplomatic Islamic foreigners into our country. But our enemy knows that, and that's why they'll hit 3 or 4 cities in one day.

Call me paranoid, but ya' know, it could happen.

[SAMWolf]

I don't think you're paranoid. You know they go in for the "spectacular". If they could pull it off, this would qualify

[Mo1]

.

[CyberAnt]

We've been on TV for months and months sending an engraved invitation, saying how vulnerable our ports are .. why is anybody surprised!!

We'll just have to pray more that "everything hidden will be revealed".

[CyberAnt]

What about the possibility of choosing an inland port on the Mississippi .. thereby shutting down the whole center of the USA?

[Chris Talk]

Yes, and expel the ones who are already here!

[CyberAnt]

I don't think you're paranoid either, and living in a port city like San Diego doesn't make it any easier to think about.

But .. I do think it will be on the east coast, or the Missippi delta, and not the west.

[wita]

Reading this thread reminds me a little of "loose lips sink ships". I can see the adds on Al Jeezera TV, "As Seen on FreeRepublic", and unless we have security clearances, and total military grade encription, I'm being just a litte if you will pardon the pun, overboard.