A Hafnia product tanker has reportedly been targeted by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea, TradeWinds has learnt.
The incident involved the 69,999-dwt BW Tagus (built 2017) and took place about 250 nautical miles (463 km) off the coast of Nigeria.
The incident happened in the early evening on 14 June, but has gone largely unreported by the media.
Details have just been reported by the Singapore-based Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP).
“On 14 June the BW Tagus reported a fishing vessel four nautical miles off with AIS on following the vessel,” Hafnia officials told TradeWinds.
“The tanker was in a waiting position and speed was only nine knots, while the suspected fishing vessel was doing 14 knots.”
“The BW Tagus increased speed to 14 knots heading into wind/weather on a south-south-west course, but the fishing vessel Avenir, now at 12.2 knots, still continued to follow astern.”
Extremely stressful situation for vessel crews
However, Hafnia officials said the distance between the vessels started increasing slowly and eventually the fishing vessel moved away.
The BW Tagus was then asked to increase its range and drift further away from the Nigerian coast to 300 nautical miles from its last instructions of 250 to 280 nautical miles.
Hafnia officials told TradeWinds that the situation in the Gulf of Guinea remains an “extremely stressful situation” for the vessel crews and the shore personnel, as the piracy in the region is known to “be very rough and often violent”.
A week before the Hafnia tanker incident, an unnamed containership was approached by five persons in a skiff around 95 nautical miles south-west off Bayelsa, Nigeria.
After several attempts to board the ship, the skiff reportedly aborted and moved away, according to the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting centre.
The maritime community of Cyprus, one of the world's largest shipmanagement hubs, is said to be running out of patience with the world's lax attitude towards pirates in the Gulf of Guinea, TradeWinds reported late last month.
The Cyprus Shipping Chamber said there was "growing concern" that the international community was not "actively seeking to eliminate piracy in the region" and was instead treating the levels of attacks against shipping as "somehow tolerable".
French plans for a naval mission to the Gulf of Guinea to combat piracy were put on hold in April due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The country's navy has routinely been supporting efforts in West African waters to combat piracy, but an outbreak on its Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier put paid to the latest mission.
