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The predawn capture yesterday of a mysterious tanker loaded with smuggled Libyan oil sealed the fate of the vessel, but has so far failed to answer questions about the ship’s provenance.
US commandos took control of the Morning Glory off the coast of Cyprus nearly a week after the ship was smuggled out of the eastern Libyan oil terminal of Es Sider loaded with a quarter of a million barrels of crude.
A Pentagon press release said that no one was hurt when Navy Seals, with helicopter support from the destroyer USS Roosevelt, boarded the Morning Glory at the request of the Libyan and Cypriot governments in a mission approved by President Barack Obama.
Oil prices were not moved by the seizure. Brent crude, the international benchmark, yesterday fell 0.5 per cent to $107.69 a barrel. Libyan oil production fell 140,000 barrels a day to 360,000 b/d in February, according to the International Energy Agency, because of disruptions to supplies. Rebel militias control the major ports of Es Sider, Ras Lanuf and Zueitina, while in the west the 350,000-b/d el-Sharara field was closed on Friday due to protests by guards over unpaid wages.
The oil aboard the Morning Glory will be returned to Libyan authorities, but the ownership and origin of the ship have confounded maritime and energy experts. Indeed, the political and commercial dealings surrounding the tanker have all the elements of a spy thriller.
Separatist rebels in eastern Libya, led by the warlord Ibrahim Jadran, last week loaded the ship with about 250,000 barrels of crude oil and spirited it into international waters in a move that precipitated the downfall of the fragile transitional government
of prime minister Ali Zeidan.
An international search for the vessel, originally a North Koreanflagged ship, was launched after it evaded an attempted blockade by Libyan fishing boats equipped with makeshift guns.
“It was the Libyan navy and other forces that first attempted to regain control of the vessel and return it to Libyan territory but faced challenges owing to bad weather and inadequate resources,” said Abdullah al-Thinni, Libya’s the new prime minister.
The Cypriot foreign ministry said the ship dropped anchor 18 nautical miles off Larnaca on Friday, just before three men, reportedly travelling on Senegalese diplomatic passports, arrived in the city on a private jet, rented a boat and sailed out to the tanker, where they were observed meeting a representative from the larger ship. The trio were arrested when they returned to
port on Friday night.
However, they were released and deported a day later when a Larnaca judge ruled any crime committed took place in international waters.
FT
