Top oil exporters' ship plans unchanged after hijack

DUBAI (Reuters) - Three of the Middle East's top oil exporting nations, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait, have no immediate plans to alter their crude oil shipping operations despite an increased threat from pirates off East Africa.

Somali pirates over the weekend hijacked a Saudi supertanker with a cargo of two million barrels of oil and the U.S. navy said on Tuesday it was now anchored off Somalia.

The rest of top oil exporter Saudi Aramco's export shipping operations were unchanged despite the seizure, a spokesman for the state owned company's shipping arm, Dubai-based Vela International, said.

"There is no suspension of shipping operations," the spokesman told Reuters. "Operations globally are continuing as per normal. This is an unfortunate incident, and this region is very sensitive."

Vela owns and operates a fleet of 19 supertankers which trade mainly between the Middle East, Europe and the U.S. Gulf Coast. The company transports about three million barrels per day of Saudi Arabia's seven million bpd of exports.

Just over half of Saudi Arabia's oil exports head east to Asia, while most of the rest goes west to Europe and the United States.

Europe-bound barrels travel past the Bab el Mandab strait, the entry from the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. This chokepoint has long been at risk of pirate attacks launched from Somalia.

U.S.-bound barrels travel what was previously considered a safer route around the southern tip of Africa. But the Saudi-owned Sirius Star was on that route and was seized far from the Gulf of Aden.

Iran, the second-largest exporter in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has also kept its shipping operations unchanged, a official from the state-run National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) said.

Iran exports about a quarter of its oil to Europe, and the rest to Asia. Sanctions prevent Tehran from exporting crude to top oil consumer the United States.

"We haven't made any decision to avoid the region where these pirates have been attacking," the official said.

"We have been very careful when traveling in this region, but now we have to be even more careful."

Kuwait's state oil shipping firm, Kuwait Oil Tanker Company (KOTC), said that it had not altered its activities.

"Everything is running normally, we have not made any changes, this is not affecting us," a company spokesman said.

Kuwait exports about 2.15 million barrels per day and ranks as the fourth-largest OPEC exporter.

WORRYING TREND

Crude oil transportation via supertankers from the Middle East have little option but to keep rounding the Cape of Good Hope, shipping sources said.

"The VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) being fully laden would have to go around the Cape of Good Hope anyway if it's going to the West," said an Asian-based supertanker broker.

"So it does not really matter in that instance what they do, except they could take a route further east in the Indian Ocean, they will have to travel further away from the coast."

The longer route would drive up the cost of shipping crude, as would higher insurance premiums for plying routes in the region seen at risk from piracy, Samuel Ciscuk, Middle East analyst at Global Insight, said in a report.

"The successful targeting of the ship therefore heralds new tangible threats to one of the world economy's lifelines, bringing virtually all crude shipping from the Gulf to the West in range of possible attacks," Ciscuk said.