Category Archives: big oil

Marc Morano – There is a name that few people will recognize

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I have been posting for the last 8 or 9 days about the article below and the related book Climate Killers. Please read them so you will know who the enemy is and what to do about it.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns/

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He is the master of the bad word. He sits around and thinks up phrases like Nature Nazis, Envirowussies, and the “fear promoting business”. He hides behind the skirts of his right wing masters. You never see him in public and if only he had a last name like Drudge….but he doesn’t…he sounds like a quarterback and looks like a pug.

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming in Tim Dickinson’s “The Climate Killers.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/6 

The Drudge of Denial
Marc Morano
Founder, Climate Depot

Morano, who worked for Sen. James “Global Warming is a Hoax” Inhofe, left Congress last year to set up shop as the Matt Drudge of climate denial. Today he runs Climate Depot, a website whose sponsor is funded by oil heir Richard Mellon Scaife. A private version of a congressional blog that Morano ran for Inhofe, the site serves as a clearinghouse for climate kooks. “He’s a central cell of the climate-denial machine,” says Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace. “He’s been very effective in delaying action on this crisis.”

Morano says climate scientists are in the “fear-promoting business” and accuses them of waging a “war on modern civilization.” But it’s Morano who trafficks in wild claims, routinely distorting the work of climate scholars and charging that “proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 billion.” A former producer for Rush Limbaugh, Morano gained fame as one of the first to trumpet Swift-boat lies about John Kerry’s military record. Andrew Watson, a British climate professor who recently debated Morano on the BBC, said it best in a whispered aside at the end of the show: “What an asshole.”

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Should be Dan Morono, don’t you think? 

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Mary Landrieu – Finally a woman polluter wow that IS equallity

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My computer was attacked by a Trojan Horse dialer on Friday and life has sucked ever since. I am posting from the Riverton Library as we speak. This meant that I did not get to give my tribute to Martin Luther King as the founder of the environemental justice movement. So here are some sites to see:

http://taintedgreen.com/general/what-would-martin-luther-king-jr-say-to-us-about-the-environment/000509

or

http://ams.confex.com/ams/87ANNUAL/techprogram/paper_122177.htm 

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But we shall move on. We are going over the 17 greatest climate killers in the US as an example of whose behavior we have to change. This post is from 2 very important articles in of all places the Rolling Stone Magazine:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns/ 

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming in Tim Dickinson’s “The Climate Killers.”

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It is sad but true…I worked in Mary’s first campaign for the Senate. The sole reason I did was to make her the first woman elected to the Senate from Louisiana. This is how I am repaid. Just think her Brother Mitch Landrieu is probably the next Mayor of New Orleans. Wonder what they can do together?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/5

The Dirty Democrat
Sen. Mary Landrieu
Democrat, Louisiana

Landrieu — who boasts of being “the most fervent pro-drilling Democrat in the Senate” — has assured oil interests that she’ll be “putting the brakes” on current efforts to cap carbon pollution. Even though her home state will be savaged by climate change, Katrina-style, Landrieu routinely sides with her energy funders. In 2008, after providing the pivotal vote to preserve $12 billion in tax breaks for Big Oil, she received $272,000 from oil and gas interests — third among Democrats. Joined by other Democrats from key energy states — including Jim Webb of Virginia, Max Baucus of Montana, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Robert Byrd of West Virginia — Landrieu tried to kill climate legislation in the Senate by requiring that it be passed by a 60-vote supermajority. “Landrieu acts more to protect Big Oil than the future for the people of Louisiana,” says Tony Massaro of the League of Conservation Voters, which added Landrieu to its “Dirty Dozen” roster of pro-pollution politicians.

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Hope somebody drills her someday. 

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Rex Tillerson Is Polluter Number 4, Exxon Mobile Is A Big Climate Killer – But why did it take so long

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Its Jam Band Friday –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FTbH21bqzs

From the beginning to the End,  drilling, refining, selling and using petroleum products was, is and will be bad for the planet. So then the real question is why is he number 4 on the list? Well hmmm I don’t know but then why are some who come after.. after? The world is just full of planet destroyers. It looks bad ma, it looks bad.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH4VqCclils )

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns/

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming in Tim Dickinson’s “The Climate Killers.”

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUxherZN25E )

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/4

 

The Climate Killers

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming

TIM DICKINSONPosted Jan 06, 2010 8:00 AM

Burning Man
Rex Tillerson
CEO, ExxonMobil

Tillerson, who oversees the world’s biggest oil company, concedes that “greenhouse-gas emissions are one of the factors affecting climate change.” But that doesn’t mean that America’s largest carbon polluter plans to stop killing the climate. Exxon is responsible for 397 million tons of CO2 emissions annually — more than twice those of the nation’s dirtiest electric utility — accounting for 6.5 percent of America’s climate-warming pollution. As part of its campaign to defeat climate legislation, which Tillerson claims will “cap economic growth,” Exxon spent $29 million on lobbying in 2008 — second only to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And despite vowing to stop its funding of climate denial, it continues to foot the bill for bogus research by right-wing outfits like the Heritage Foundation, which asserts that “growing scientific evidence casts doubt on whether global warming constitutes such a threat.”

In a disingenuous attempt to appear serious about the threat of climate change, Tillerson has recently begun to advocate a tax on carbon pollution — a measure he knows has absolutely no chance of passing.

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Please read both articles they are really really really important.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFyIaslIsiM&feature=related )

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Jack Gerard – The Number 3 Climate Killer in the US

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We covered the Citizen Energy protest on this blog before because I went to the event they held in Springfield and was appalled. You will have to go back and look at my May posts or maybe June because I do not remember when they were. I took pictures…it was so bogus it would give astroturf a bad name. Most of the attendees were Republican and industry operatives or they were seniors bussed in from Southern Illinois. I mean like 6 big Greyhound style buses.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/3

The Fake Protestor
Jack Gerard
President, American Petroleum

As head of the American Petroleum Institute, Gerard serves as the frontman for the nation’s oil and gas industry, including energy giants like Exxon, Shell, BP and Halliburton. Although API now claims to back the move to a “carbon-constrained economy,” Gerard has been working behind the scenes to scuttle climate legislation. According to an internal memo leaked in August, Gerard directed API’s nearly 400 member companies to mobilize their employees to attend “Energy Citizen” rallies in 20 states to protest a cap on carbon pollution. To ensure the success of the fake grass-roots protests, Gerard bragged that he had also enlisted a bevy of polluting allies — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. “Please treat this information as sensitive,” Gerard cautioned in the memo. “We don’t want critics to know our game plan.”

This is not the first time that API has been at the center of a secretive campaign to derail carbon controls.
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Please read both environmental pieces in this issue of Rolling Stone online. They are great!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUxnpQFlsS4

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The Number 2 Polluter In The United States – Rupert Murdock

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I know he is an Australian bloke but he owns the media in the US…

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns/

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming in Tim Dickinson’s “The Climate Killers.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/2

The Disinformer
Rupert Murdoch
CEO, News Corporation

In 2007, when the world’s most powerful media baron announced his newfound conviction that global warming “poses clear, catastrophic threats,” it seemed as though the truth about climate change might finally get the attention it deserves. Murdoch promised that not only would News Corp. itself become carbon-neutral by 2010, but that his media outlets would explain the urgent need for a cap on carbon emissions. Climate change, he pledged, would be addressed as a sober reality across the News Corp. empire, whether as a plot element on 24 or in a story on Fox News. “I don’t think there’s any question of my conviction on this issue,” Murdoch declared. “I’ve come to feel it very strongly.”

Since then, however, Murdoch and his media operations have become the nation’s leading source of disinformation about climate change. In October, Fox Business ran an extended segment on “The Carbon Myth,” inviting a hack scientist to “make the case” that more carbon pollution is actually “good for the environment.” The Wall Street Journal has continued to lie not only about the reality of global warming but about Obama’s efforts to prevent it, denouncing climate legislation as “likely to be the biggest tax in American history.”

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Read the whole article. It is pretty damning.

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Oh and I can’t resist, this is the best collection of envirovideos I have ever seen.

http://ecopolitology.org/2010/01/11/the-top-9-viral-videos-of-the-green-movement-1958-2010/

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There Are Only 500 Sources World Wide That Need To Be Curbed To Combat Global Warming

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If you discount Airplanes, the single biggest cause of Global Warming, and the world’s Militaries, the second largest cause of Global warming then there are 500, yes just 500 point of source polluters that are causing Global Warming. These sources make very real people wealthy. It is these people and there proxies who are causing the problem. Here are my 17 most favorite Americans.

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming in Tim Dickinson’s “The Climate Killers.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633524/the_climate_killers/

The Profiteer
Warren Buffett
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Despite being a key adviser to Obama during the financial crisis, America’s best-known investor has been blasting the president’s push to curb global warming — using the same lying points promoted by far-right Republicans. The climate bill passed by the House, Buffett insists, is a “huge tax — and there’s no sense calling it anything else.” What’s more, he says, the measure would mean “very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for their electricity.” Never mind that the climate bill, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would actually save Americans with the lowest incomes about $40 a year.

But Buffett, whose investments have the power to move entire markets, is doing far more than bad-mouthing climate legislation — he’s literally banking on its failure. In recent months, the Oracle of Omaha has invested billions in carbon-polluting industries, seeking to cash in as the world burns. His conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, has added 1.28 million shares of America’s biggest climate polluter, ExxonMobil, to its balance sheet. And in November, Berkshire placed a huge wager on the future of coal pollution, purchasing the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad for $26 billion — the largest acquisition of Buffett’s storied career. BNSF is the nation’s top hauler of coal, shipping some 300 million tons a year. That’s enough to light up 10 percent of the nation’s homes — many of which are powered by another Berkshire subsidiary, MidAmerican Energy. Although Berkshire is the largest U.S. firm not to disclose its carbon pollution — and second globally only to the Bank of China — its utilities have the worst emissions intensity in America, belching more than 65 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2008 alone.

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16 more to go. See yah tomorrow

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Why The Energy Companies Lobbied Against Healthcare – To stave off Cap and Trade

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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns/

 

As the World Burns

How Big Oil and Big Coal mounted one of the most aggressive lobbying campaigns in history to block progress on global warming

JEFF GOODELLPosted Jan 06, 2010 8:15 AM

Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming in Tim Dickinson’s “The Climate Killers.”

This was supposed to be the transformative moment on global warming, the tipping point when America proved to the world that capitalism has a conscience, that we take the fate of the planet seriously. According to the script, Congress would pass a landmark bill committing the U.S. to deep cuts in carbon emissions. President Obama would then arrive in Copenhagen for the international climate summit, armed with the moral and political capital he needed to challenge the rest of the world to do the same. After all, wasn’t this the kind of bold move the Norwegians were anticipating when they awarded Obama the Nobel Peace Prize?

As we now know, it didn’t work out that way. Obama arrived in Copenhagen last month without any legislation committing the U.S. to reduce carbon pollution. Instead of reaching agreement on how to stop cooking the planet, the summit devolved into bickering over who bears the most blame for turning up the heat. The world once again missed an opportunity to avert disaster — and the delay is likely to have deadly consequences. In recent years, we have moved from talking about the possibility of climate change to watching it unfold before our eyes. The Arctic is melting, wildfires are turning into infernos, warm-weather insects are devouring forests, droughts are getting longer and more lethal. And the more we learn about climate change, the more it becomes apparent how enormous the risks are. Just a few years ago, researchers estimated that sea levels would likely rise 17 inches by 2100. Now they believe it could be three feet or more — a cataclysmic shift that would doom many of the world’s cities, including London and New Orleans, and create tens of millions of climate refugees.

Our collective response to the emerging catastrophe verges on suicidal. World leaders have been talking about tackling climate change for nearly 20 years now — yet carbon emissions keep going up and up. “We are in a race against time,” says Rep. Jay Inslee, a Democrat from Washington who has fought for sharp reductions in planet-warming pollution. “Mother Nature isn’t sitting around waiting for us to get our political act together.” In fact, our failure to confront global warming is more than simply political incompetence. Over the past year, the corporations and special interests most responsible for climate change waged an all-out war to prevent Congress from cracking down on carbon pollution in time for Copenhagen. The oil and coal industries deployed an unprecedented army of lobbyists, spent millions on misleading studies and engaged in outright deception to derail climate legislation. “It was the most aggressive and corrupt lobbying campaign I’ve ever seen,” says Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic consultant.

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America’s Love Affair With The Car Is Over – Talking about deteriorating driveways

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Maybe I won’t need mine much longer.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-car-ownership-shifts-into-reverse/article1418860/

U.S. car ownership shifts into reverse

Why are there four million fewer vehicles on the roads in 2009? Think gas prices, transit, tweeting teens and a car-to-driver ‘saturation point’

Martin Mittelstaedt

From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail Published on Monday, Jan. 04, 2010 9:18PM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Jan. 05, 2010 2:45AM EST

Americans’ infatuation with their cars has endured through booms and busts, but last year something rare happened in the United States: The number of automobiles actually fell.

The size of the U.S. car fleet dropped by a hefty four million vehicles to 246 million, the only large decline since the U.S. Department of Transportation began modern recordkeeping in 1960. Americans bought only 10 million cars – and sent 14 million to the scrapyard.

The decline in sales from previous years came despite 2009’s cash-for-clunkers program, in which the U.S. government gave Americans up to $4,500 (U.S.) to trade in their gas guzzlers for new, more fuel-efficient cars – a program that saw nearly 700,000 vehicles scrapped.

And the overall drop in car ownership has prompted speculation that the long American love affair with the car is fading. Analysts cite such diverse factors as high gas prices, the expansion of many municipal transit systems, and the popularity of networking websites among teenagers replacing cars as a way of socializing.

“We’ve reached a sort of saturation point in this country” when it comes to cars, said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental think tank based in Washington.

The institute is issuing an analysis Wednesday that contends the drop in 2009 isn’t a one-time fluke caused by the recession, and that U.S. car ownership is likely to be entering a longer-term decline that will see the fleet drop by another 25 million by 2020.

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But then why this?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126264987791815617.html

Cramped on Land, Big Oil Bets at Sea

BY BEN CASSELMAN AND GUY CHAZAN

Big Oil never wanted to be here, in 4,300 feet of water far out in the Gulf of Mexico, drilling through nearly five miles of rock.

It is an expensive way to look for oil. Chevron Corp. is paying nearly $500,000 a day to the owner of the Clear Leader, one of the world’s newest and most powerful drilling rigs. The new well off the coast of Louisiana will connect to a huge platform floating nearby, which cost Chevron $650 million to build. The first phase of this oil-exploration project took more than 10 years and cost $2.7 billion —

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Something seems out of whack.

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Top Energy Stories Of 2009 – The end of the Naughties

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Ok we are 14 hours away from the year 2010 so I am going to have to post several top 10 lists. It seems that everyone has to have one. Since that is the case I will use theirs. But first I have to say:

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Community Energy Systems is a nonprofit 501c3 organization chartered in Illinois in Sangamon County. As such we are dependent on public donations for our continued existence. We also use Adsense as a fundraiser. Please click on the ads that you see on this page, on our main page and on our Bulletin Board (Refrigerator Magnets) and you will be raising money for CES. We say a heartfelt THANK YOU to all who do.

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Our First top 10 is from the Energy Tribune but actually originates with:

Posted on Dec. 28, 2009

By Robert Rapier

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2768

The Top Ten Energy Stories of 2009 Ed. note: This item originally ran in Robert Rapier’s R-Squared Energy Blog.

Here are my choices for the Top 10 energy related stories of 2009. Previously I listed how I voted in Platt’s Top 10 poll, but my list is a bit different from theirs. I have a couple of stories here that they didn’t list, and I combined some topics. And don’t get too hung up on the relative rankings. You can make arguments that some stories should be higher than others, but I gave less consideration to whether 6 should be ahead of 7 (for example) than just making sure the important stories were listed.

  1. Volatility in the oil marketsMy top choice for this year is the same as my top choice from last year. While not as dramatic as last year’s action when oil prices ran from $100 to $147 and then collapsed back to $30, oil prices still more than doubled from where they began 2009. That happened without the benefit of an economic recovery, so I continue to wonder how long it will take to come out of recession when oil prices are at recession-inducing levels. Further, coming out of recession will spur demand, which will keep upward pressure on oil prices. That’s why I say we may be in The Long Recession.
  2. The year of natural gasThis could have easily been my top story, because there were so many natural gas-related stories this year. There were stories of shale gas in such abundance that it would make peak oil irrelevant, stories of shale gas skeptics, and stories of big companies making major investments into converting their fleets to natural gas.Whether the abundance ultimately pans out, the appearance of abundance is certainly helping to keep a lid on natural gas prices. By failing to keep up with rising oil prices, an unprecedented oil price/natural gas price ratio developed. If you look at prices on the NYMEX in the years ahead, the markets are anticipating that this ratio will continue to be high. And as I write this, you can pick up a natural gas contract in 2019 for under $5/MMBtu.
  3. U.S. demand for oil continues to declineAs crude oil prices skyrocketed in 2008, demand for crude oil and petroleum products fell from 20.7 million barrels per day in 2007 to 19.5 million bpd in 2008 (Source: EIA). Through September 2009, year-to-date demand is averaging 18.6 million bpd – the lowest level since 1997. Globally, demand was on a downward trend as well, but at a less dramatic pace partially due to demand growth in both China and India.

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Then there is Greentech Media:

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/top-ten-energy-storage-of-2009/

Top Ten Energy Storage of 2009

Electric vehicles boost lithium-ion batteries, DOE dollars for grid storage, ice-making air conditioners, and a smart grid to rule them all.

Energy storage – you can’t do electric vehicles without it, and it sure would make renewable solar and wind energy a lot more useful.

That’s the imperative behind 2009’s push into energy storage – from the fast-moving world of batteries for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles to the slower development of a variety of technologies for storing power on the electricity grid.

1. A123, Green Tech’s First IPO of 2009: A123 Systems broke the green tech IPO drought in September, when it debuted its shares to the public markets and was immediately rewarded with a doubling of their price. But the lithium-ion battery maker has since seen shares fall to close to their initial offering price of $13.50, perhaps linked to the scaling back of electric vehicle plans by customer Chrysler. A123 is also making batteries for grid energy storage, bridging two worlds that have until now been mostly separate.

2. The Government Boosts Vehicle Batteries” Next-generation batteries wouldn’t be where they are today without the billions of stimulus dollars the federal government has aimed at the sector. In August, the Department of Energy handed out $2.4 billion to such companies as EnerG2, A123 Systems, Johnson Controls, eTec, EnerDel, Saft and Chrysler and General Motors, most of it to build battery factories in the United States – a key goal of the grants, given Asia’s dominance in battery technology and manufacturing.

3. Fuel Cells’ Waning Fortunes? What the federal government has given to batteries, it has taken away from a once-favored alternative – fuel cells. Technologies to convert hydrogen into electricity and water are clean, but they also require a massive infrastructure to deliver hydrogen – which is mostly made today by cracking natural gas – to millions of vehicles. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said he will cut back drastically on DOE funding for vehicular fuel cell research, which he described as decades away from commercial viability. In the meantime, fuel cells soldier on in the stationary power generation market, and are finding niches in forklifts and other short-range heavy vehicles, as well as in military applications.

But wait? Panasonic has started to deliver fuel cells that burn natural gas to produce heat and electricity in Japan and Bloom Energy is expected to come out of its hidey hole soon to talk about devices that pretty much do the same thing for industrial customers. By exploiting heat and power, these fuel cells can be 80 plus percent efficient.

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What better way to end the new year but with the Department of Defense:

http://dodenergy.blogspot.com/2009/12/year-in-review-top-10-dod-energy-events.html

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Year in Review: Top 10 DOD Energy Events of 2009

Not sure if you’ll agree, but from my vantage point, this was the first year that merits a DOD Energy top ten. Folks who’ve been at this enterprise a long time, like Tom Morehouse and Chris DiPetto at OSD (and a small handful of others in the Services), have been doing energy grunt work without a heck of a lot of support or credit (that’s my take, not theirs). Over the past decade there have been isolated wins and signs of improvement, but nothing sustained.

But this year something changed, and I have to give credit to the increasing strength of the convoy connection. It’s finally shown everyone that being smart and proactive on energy issues isn’t the domain of Birkenstock wearing, granola eating, tree hugging peace-nicks. The clear (and easy to understand and communicate) link between fuel convoys and 1) causalities, 2) costs, and 3) mission degradation.

I’m sure I’m leaving a lot out (that’s a good thing). But without further adieu, here’s the list for the year, in no particular order:

  1. Gigantic Army solar installation off the ground at Fort Irwin in California’s Mojave Desert to advance conversation beyond Nellis. Score – Fort Irwin: 500+ Megawatts, Nellis AFB: 14 Megawatts
  2. Boeing’s high tech, super efficient 787 Dreamliner finally flew. Basis for future tanker/transport?
  3. Convoy lessons brought the concept of proactive energy planning fully out of its Birkenstock phase … for everyone.
  4. Energy audits in Afghanistan commence with Marines. It’s called MEAT, for Marine Energy Assessment Team, see here and here.
  5. Like DARPA to advance US space tech post Sputnik, ARPA-E‘s mission is to turbocharge US competitiveness in energy tech (ET).
  6. 3 of the 4 Services hold major confs exclsively on energy issues. The Navy version in particular generated a huge amount of great info

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

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Piracy Spreads To West Africa – For now they just wanted the cash

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Community Energy Systems is a nonprofit 501c3 organization chartered in Illinois in Sangamon County. As such we are dependent on public donations for our continued existence. We also use Adsense as a fundraiser. Please click on the ads that you see on this page, on our main page and on our Bulletin Board (Refrigerator Magnets) and you will be raising money for CES. We say a heartfelt THANK YOU to all who do.

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Pirates kill seaman in W.Africa tanker attack

By Fiacre Vidjingninou (AFP) – 1 day ago

COTONOU — Pirates attacked an oil tanker off the coast of west Africa, killing a Ukrainian officer before escaping with the contents of the ship’s safe, the ship’s owners and Benin’s navy commander said Tuesday.

Commander Maxime Ahoyo said the officer on the Monrovia-flagged Cancale Star was shot dead when he confronted the pirates after they boarded the vessel in darkness 18 nautical miles (33 kilometres) off the coast of Benin.

The tanker’s Latvian captain, Jaroslavs Semenovics, said around six or seven pirates had approached the tanker in a speed boat.

“They came on deck, pointed a pistol to the head of one of the sailors, marched him to the cabin,” Semenovics told AFP.

“They asked me to open the safe and they collected all the cash,” he added. He did not say how much was stolen.

The 230-metre (750-foot) Cancale Star was carrying 89,000 cubic metres of crude from Nigeria’s Niger Delta, the captain said.

Dot Dot Dot

Medics aboard the vessel said four other crew members were wounded in the attack, one seriously.

The pirates fled after a member of the tanker’s crew raised the alarm by sounding a siren, with the crew managing to overpower a pirate and hand him over to police for questioning.

The captured pirate said he was from a Nigerian border town.

The multinational crew of 24 includes Russians, Filipinos, Latvians and Ukrainians, Radings said.

Piracy in oil-rich west African waters is on the rise, according to the International Maritime Bureau, with more than 100 cases last year.

Most attacks occur while ships are at anchor or close to the shore, unlike in east Africa, where Somali pirates have netted millions of dollars in ransoms in exchange for the release of ships captured hundreds of miles from the coast.

Dot Dot Dot

It said that pirates have attacked and robbed vessels and kidnapped crews along the coast and rivers, anchorages, ports and surrounding waters.

Officials voiced fears earlier this year that west African pirates would copy the tactics of Somali gangs.

From January to September of this year, the International Maritime Organisation reported 160 acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia, including 34 hijacked vessels and more than 450 people made hostage

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What shall we call this? Poor people gone wild? There are after all no fish in the sea.

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