Who do you call when someone hijacks your commercial oil tanker? The United States, of course:
A United States Navy SEAL team took control of an oil tanker in waters near Cyprus on Monday. The tanker had been hijacked by armed Libyans.
The commandos seized the ship, named Morning Glory, after three Libyan militiamen took control of the ship earlier this month.
Libya’s and Cyprus’s governments requested help from the United States to get the commercial tanker back. No American was hurt in the operation.
“No one was hurt tonight when U.S. forces, at the request of both the Libyan and Cypriot governments, boarded and took control of the commercial tanker Morning Glory, a stateless vessel seized earlier this month by three armed Libyans,” Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said in a statement.
President Obama endorsed the team’s boarding operation, which was executed just after 10 p.m. EDT Sunday, according to the Pentagon.
We can discuss why it’s our responsibility to police the high seas, but the high seas do need policing.
Ah, Oilbusters! Valuable cargo indeed!
It’s fabulous that we maintain a highly trained mercenary force for these necessary operations so no oil crime can go unpunished. I’d just like to know what the bill for services is, and to whom is it presented? Likely not Libya or Cyprus…perhaps the “trader” who bought the futures contract?
And what’s the price list for other military “rescues” across the globe? We’re not quite at the point of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who rented his soldiers out to George III for, um, rescue operations in the New World, but theirs was a more honest age.
The oil must go thru!
I assume most Americans beam with pleasure at these stories of far-flung militarist expertise, just as they scream with delight when the Blue Angels jet squadron roars over the Super Bowl just as the last note of the Star Spangled Banner is belted out. The Prussia of the 21st Century. Bread, Circuses and Seals.
The use of SEALS should have been unnecessary, given the tens of thousands of US and NATO troops already in Libya, after the Obama invasion.
I mean, they’re there, right? The oil certainly is. So the troops must be there.
Just like in Iraq. Those guys are stuck there forever, too.
The US in fact let other folks put their boots on the ground in Libya. Even the CIA mission was not enough, or intelligent enough, to prevent the attack at Benghazi.
If there are tens of thousand of US and NATO troops currently in Libya, they are keeping a low profile.
I think that the Italians had first dibs on the oil, but Libya contracted it out to other countries’ oil companies.
Here’s one article.
Jacey Fortin, International Business Times: Whatever happened to Libyan oil; for Western oil giants the crude is sweet, but Russia and China may get the biggest taste
At that point, Libya still was honoring the existing contracts from the Gadhafi era.
They’re carefully hidden by the oil companies. They’re there, but any media that would tell you that are co-opted, bought out, or otherwise silenced by their millions.
If it wasn’t for the comments sections of progressive blogs, you wouldn’t hear about them at all.
But they’re there if the oil is there. That’s irrefutable logic.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Or the cargo in the hold!
Is… is this snark?
Yes.
It continues to amaze me that regulars at this site still don’t get what you’re doing. Keep at it; it amuses me, at least.
Uh, was asking about euzoius. So unless that’s an alt…
I think Davis might have replied “yes” to your snark question because he thought you were asking about his SEALS/Iraq comment rather than euzoius; and having just seen TarheelDem appear to take D-X-M seriously, that’s why I posted that. Doesn’t every regular here by now know Davis’s schtick? “Seize the commanding heights” and all that?
He’s trolled me a few times in the past but I can never tell if he’s serious and trolling, or just trolling.
Or when relief is needed in an area devastated by a tsunami or earthquake. These are all things the US military/FBI/NTSB are used for. That is why any plan to downsize the military and reduce its footprint (which both need to happen) has to include plans on who will provide relief and search capabilities when these disasters hit. Right now it is the United States. We can’t afford to keep doing it but the world also can’t afford for us to stop doing it without plans to make other nations step up.
Well…they could pay us, of course.
But…wait a minute!!!
U.S. oil price. Now at about € 0,679 for regular grade gasoline.
Say…French oil price….€ 1,479/liter
Or German…€ 1,554/liter
Or the U.K…€ 1,548/liter
So the U.S. is getting a 50%+ break on oil prices. Maybe more, because the huge amount of military fuel expenditures…obtained at gunpoint, really…is bound to be obtained at much cheaper prices.
Oh.
Nevermind…
Yore freind,
Emily Litella
I wonder what quid pro quos went into this little operation?
Libya
And Cyprus:
Naaaahhhh…couldn’t be anything about the economic imperialism of the NATO powers, right?
Naaaaaahhhh…
It’s just good ol’l Gary Cooper Americanism at work here, helpin’ the little fellers out in time ‘a need.
Oh.
Nevermind.
Yore freind…
Emily Litella
P.S. Gimme a break here, Booman!!! If you want to stand up for Team America’s World Police machine, just go the fuck ahead and say so!!!
The US took over from the British during World War II and never stopped.
Making the international commons secure is a job that requires authentic international cooperation to have an effective global economy. Unfortunately that has only been possible when one nation has imperial control of the seas. It makes the international commons de facto the preserve of the patrolling country.
The US has been providing this service for 73 years essentially for free to other countries. And it is the primary reason that the US has a navy at all. Piracy hurts commerce; Thomas Jefferson rethought his position on creating a navy in order to pursue the Barbary pirates.
The folks that made off with the oil tanker are the lineal descendants of the Barbary pirates–literally…”to the shores of Tripoli…”
No! No! They’re liberating hydrocarbons from the blood-soaked hands of the plutocrats…
Who was their contract with? That’s a pretty dinky oil tanker.
So it’s not a big blow against the forces of petro-capitalism…
As soon as size matters you’re on a very slippery slope indeed! A tanker is a tanker!
No pirate-job is too small for America’s SEALs! Especially an oil-jack!
Those were OUR PIRATES on the oil tanker. The ‘Morning Glory‘ used to fly under a North Korean flag, however the name has been changed and is now owned by a Greece company called Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd. (Georgios Prokopiou) and flies under a Liberian flag. The captain of the tanker bunkered in the Eastern province of Libya which is under control of a US friendly militia and want to secede from the failed state created by western powers three years back. The ‘government’ in Tripoli has missed oil revenues for months. I have no idea why the US Navy Seals were sent on a mission in a commercial dispute between US allied militias. What one sows …
See my diary about creating an independent state in Eastern Libya (Misrata) – Libyan Leader Aims for Separate Cyrenaican State.
○ Libya Navy Impounds Tanker Seeking to Export From Rebel Port – 10.03.2014
(Business Week) – Rebels seeking autonomy for eastern Libya have seized control of key export sites in July last year, causing oil production to plunge. It’s one of several internal conflicts that have destabilized the North African nation since the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
Libya’s inability to restore oil exports from its eastern terminals was among the reasons cited by Citigroup Inc. when it raised its 2014 forecast for Brent crude to $103 a barrel from $93 a barrel on Feb. 25. The country is pumping about 275,000 barrels a day compared with 1.4 million barrels a day last July.
○ Libyan militia commander seeks US help – 11.03.2014
(St. Louis Post Dispatch) – A Libyan commander whose militia seized vital oil terminals in the country’s east says he is seeking help from the United States amid a standoff with the government.
Ibrahim Jedran said in a statement Tuesday that U.S. help would be “welcome” in monitoring militia’s management of oil exports and revenues from their eastern region.
Jeddran’s militia sparked a three-day crisis over a North Korean-flagged oil tanker that docked without government permission in the key port of al-Sidra, where it had attempted to load oil for the first time.
○ Libyan prime minister ousted by parliament
(AP) – Libya’s parliament ousted Western-backed prime minister Ali Zidan in a Tuesday vote, removing the first democratically chosen leader who had struggled for 15 months to stem the country’s spiraling descent into chaos, with divisive political power struggles and rampant militias out of the control of the weak central government.
The government has been paralyzed for months by the power struggle between Islamists in parliament trying to remove Zidan and anti-Islamist political factions — each side backed by rival militias.
The Cyrenaica Defense Forces militia, led by a commander named Ibrahim Jedran, … The Misrata militia leading them is one of the most powerful in the country …
PS My preliminary conclusion, Obama is mediating in the conflict by using Navy Seals as enforcers. Haha.
PM Ali Zeidan had been seen as too pro-western, the latest helping hand by US Navy Seals will confirm that projection.
Parliament canned Zeidan last week.
Oh, you got that in your first comment.
This was a tanker from Sidra, whose militia is independent of the Cyrenaica militia (although they might operate in alliance on some or all operations). I would take Jeddran’s claims with a grain of salt.
To properly understand this, we need to know who the Libyan government’s customer was and who the militia’s customer was. For example, if the government’s customer was a Russian company and the militia’s customer was, say another Russian company, the import of US seizure relative to Ukraine depends on which company is closest to Putin.
And the relationship between the local militias involved; they are still jealous of their local independence. And the Misrata militia does not necessarily have the same interests as the Benghazi militia, let alone the Sidra militia.
And then you have to look at what trainers have been associated with which militias. (Misrata’s is independent of foreign control; no one came to their rescue and they were under siege and out of touch for a couple of months.)
Give the lack of transparency of the US deep state and the compartmentalization of special operations it is not inconceiveable that the US Seals frustrated an operation by another separate special operations unit working long-term in Libya. You can’t always assume that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.
The presence of a Greek shipowner means little in and of itself.
The flags of convenience link lends to the idea that the militia were intending to sell it on the black market, which pretty much eliminates any national interests being involved except for national covert ops purchases, which could have resulted in the oil going to anyone. And the cash laundered from other operations.
The use of a North Korean flag has the implication of a grandstanding false flag operation that sought to attract attention–and embarrass Zeidan, which worked and he is gone.
When liberals start suggesting, in any way, that the U.S. should not do everything it can, using whatever resources it has at its disposal, to combat pirates, they lose elections. They will lose everything.
A pirate is just as likely (maybe more so) to attack the average sail boat as a tanker.
Don’t be stupid.
.
I think this is right.
Why it’s our responsibility? Well, I can tell you why it’s our right.
Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, under the enumerated powers of Congress:
“To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;”
Why do the seas need policing? Because we must preserve the profits that enrich our citizens. That’s a choice we make. We could make different choices. We could decide that oil consumption is going to ruin the climate and drive the cost higher by letting the supply chain wither. We could decide to make what we need here in America instead of relying on long distance shipping through troubled parts of the world.
In no way do the high seas “need” policing, it just makes our lives more convenient.