Somali pirates hijack $20M of oil going to US

Twenty percent of global shipping -- including eight percent of global oil shipments -- is funneled into the narrow, pirate-infested Gulf of Aden that leads through the Red Sea to the Suez Canal. The route is bordered on one side by the failed state of Somalia and on the other by the increasingly unstable country of Yemen.

The US Energy Information Administration says about 5 percent of daily oil shipments pass down the east African coast and around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, which is where the Maran Centaurus appeared to be headed, Granberg said.

The ship had 9 Greeks, 16 Filipinos, 2 Ukrainians, and a Romanian aboard. Granberg said the ship's owner reported the crew was not injured in the attack.

The vessel is only the second oil tanker captured by Somali pirates. Its seizure resurrected the fears raised by the takeover of the Saudi-owned Sirius Star, a hijacking resolved with a $3 million ransom payment.

The Sirius Star held 2 million barrels of oil valued at about $100 million and was released last January.

The seizure of the tanker will have a minimal effect on global oil markets, said Ben Cahill, the petroleum risk manager at global oil consultancy PFC energy, although American refineries in the Gulf of Mexico region waiting for the ship's crude might experience some disruption.

Cahill said the longer term concern for the oil industry was that Yemen would collapse like its neighbor Somalia, and create an "arc of instability" that would block the mouth of the Gulf of Aden. Somalia's lawless 1,880-mile coastline already provides a perfect pirate haven.

The impoverished Horn of Africa nation has not had a functioning government for a generation and the weak UN-backed administration is too busy fighting the Islamist insurgency to arrest pirates. Across the Gulf of Aden, tensions between north and south Yemen continue to rise and Islamic militancy is increasing.

"The situation could degenerate into a choke point for global shipping," in five to ten years, Cahill said, driving up the costs.

Pirates now hold about a dozen vessels hostage and more than 200 crew members.