Terrorist threat shakes up world's maritime industry

Terrorist threat shakes up world's maritime industry

Agence France-Presse, Martin Abbugao, Singapore

Fears of terrorist attacks in the high seas and busy trading
ports are shaking up the world's shipping industry as the focus
shifts from aviation to maritime security, analysts and officials
said.

The terrifying prospect of a suicide attack, or bombs being
smuggled into a U.S. port, has prompted sweeping security
measures, and maritime executives are fretting over higher costs
and operational complications.

By July next year, ships and ports must comply with new
security rules mandated by the International Maritime
Organization (IMO) to prevent a seaborne equivalent of the
September 2001 suicide attacks by plane hijackers in New York and
Washington.

The U.S., the world's biggest export market, has also imposed
more stringent checks on goods bound for its ports and has
required vessels to give an advance manifest containing a
detailed description of their cargo 24 hours before they are
loaded.

American Customs officers are stationed in major ports
worldwide to help pre-screen container boxes bound for the U.S.

For shipping firms, the costs could come from hiring and
training security officers, preparing security plans and paying
higher container storage fees. An estimated 43,000 ships and
mobile offshore drilling units worldwide have to comply with the
new rules.

Ports have to contend with costs related to the security
inspection of containers, putting in place new equipment such as
scanners and delays in ship departures.

"The shipping industry is not exactly the most profitable
industry right now," one executive said.

And in an industry traditionally used to self-regulation, the
sweeping changes could be hard to swallow.

Under the IMO rules for example, shipping lines are required
to appoint a company security officer and a security officer for
each ship.

A security assessment must be carried out and a security plan
put on board each vessel. The ship's security system has to be
audited to make sure it complies with the requirements.

"The implications of security on supply chain design can be
profound," said Chelsea White, chair of transportation and
logistics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the U.S. said
at a conference on maritime security here last week.

"More generally, issues on security are now having significant
influence on where raw materials, commodities and system
components are purchased and built," White said.

U.S. Coast Guard and Customs officials and security experts
said the maritime industry remains a vulnerable target for
terrorists seeking to wreak havoc of a magnitude and impact
similar to the September 2001 strikes in the U.S..

"The consequences of a terrorist incident using a container
would be profound," said U.S. Customs Service deputy commissioner
Douglas Browning.

If a weapon of mass destruction concealed in a container box
was detonated at a U.S. port, "the impact on trade and the world
economy will be immediate and devastating," he said at the
conference.

The U.S. and other countries will stop unloading containers,
resulting in a massive pile-up and "the net result will be
complete paralysis of the global trade network," Browning said.

The U.S. Coast Guard commandant, Admiral Thomas Collins, said:
"A World Trade Centre equivalent in the maritime sector would
have a serious, long lasting negative impact both to our systems
of trade and to our economies."

Vikram Verma, chief executive of U.S.-based supply chain
security firm Savi Technology, Inc., said sabotaging the
efficient flow of goods is one of the most effective ways to
cripple the U.S. economy.

Nearly half of all incoming trade to the U.S. arrives by ship,
most of it coming by containers.

Security analysts said a similar disruption could result if
one devastating seaborne attack is carried out successfully in
the busy Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia which has long been
considered a piracy hot spot.

"Where piracy is active, terrorism is more than possible,"
said Raphael Kahn, director of Netherlands-based consultancy
Secure Marine BV.

"Piracy is active in unprotected regions where it is easy to
get to the target unseen and it is easy to escape too. Why would
a terrorist look for hard targets when easy targets are available
with the same effect?" he asked.