The location where this theft occurred alone is cause for concern.
SNIP: Other dangers to maritime interests are also becoming apparent. In June, for example, an offshore maintenance engineer with deep-sea diving skills, who had been kidnapped in 2000, was released by Abu Sayyaf. He reported that his captors had wanted to learn how to dive, but were not interested in learning how to resurface.
At first sight, one purpose of gaining such one-way expertise might be to set charges for blowing up a supertanker. But supertanker hulls rest no more than 40 feet below sea level, hardly deep-sea diving depths. It is more likely that al-Qaeda is training for attacks against deep water rigs and platforms. Where? One target could be the offshore oil and gas drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, near New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi. Attacks on the pipes that link drilling platforms to the ocean floor at depths of more than 500 feet, where large clusters of machinery are set up to pump natural gas and oil to the surface, could cause serious disruption to domestic US energy supplies as well as grave environmental damage. In an extreme case, such an attack could severely restrict seagoing traffic through the mouth of the Mississippi.
Thanks MamaDearest, I think there is a big cause for concern there.