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Somalia piracy and Yemen attacks revive marine war risk premiums
Two hijackings off Somalia and Yemen this week highlight how Red Sea and Iran-related pressure is stretching naval patrols, feeding higher war risk pricing.
Insurance Business reports that twenty-two Indian seafarers were involved in two separate hijackings off Somalia and Yemen this week, a development that is bringing Somali piracy back onto marine underwriters' agendas after more than a decade of relative quiet.
The cargo ship Lutuf, flying a Cameroon flag, was boarded by eight armed men on August 17 about four nautical miles off Mareeyo on Somalia's Puntland coast. The ship, owned by Polar Movement Shipping, had been carrying weapons, communications gear and satellite equipment from Turkey to a military training facility in Mogadishu, and its ten-person crew included six Indians, plus a Turkish crew member, a Georgian, and two Serbian security contractors. On August 20, the tanker Sibu 1 was taken about 130 nautical miles off Yemen and steered toward Somali waters, with 20 crew aboard, 16 of them Indian.
Somali port authorities said the tanker had previously called at a fuel terminal in Yemen controlled by Houthi forces, raising questions about whether it is tied to the sanctions evasion tanker fleet moving Iranian oil. India's foreign ministry confirmed that all 22 crew members from both ships were safe.
The article says the insurance pricing mechanism runs through the Joint War Committee's List of Areas of Perceived Enhanced Risk, which was widened in March to include Bahrain, Djibouti, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar and to extend coverage along Somali and Pakistani coastlines, a move attributed to the Iran conflict rather than piracy alone. It adds that any vessel entering a listed area can face an additional premium and notification obligations, and that the list was reviewed again in July, with further changes possible if attacks continue to climb.