Operators of Oil Tankers Discount Gulf Mine Risks

Tanker operators sitting on top of 2 million barrels of oil today discounted the danger from a growing number of mines spotted floating in the Persian Gulf.

“What can a mine do to a supertanker?” asked an official aboard the 307,235-ton crude oil carrier Esso Geneva. “It can just punch a hole, it cannot sink it.”

Other shipping executives said mines might sink smaller vessels and even warships.

The U.S. Navy warned all merchant ships Friday that they entered the waterway at their own risk because of mines and possible missile attacks in the war to drive Iraq from Kuwait.

Iraq fired up to 10 missiles Sunday night and early Monday morning at Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province, where the kingdom’s main oil fields, refineries and loading terminals are located. But shipping executives said tankers were still taking on crude at Ras Tannurah terminal, just north of Dhahran.

Shipping sources said shipowners and captains would be ready to take the risks if cargo owners paid soaring insurance costs.

“Sending mines floating down the gulf is like sowing mines in the desert and then putting signs on top of them,” one gulf-based shipping company executive said.

The Esso Geneva official, who declined to be identified, said that despite the U.S. warning, the gulf is much safer now than it was in the closing stages of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, when both sides attacked merchant shipping.

Mines were abundant at that time, he added.

“I can talk only for myself, but the presence of Western navies in the gulf gives everyone some kind of assurance,” said the official, contacted by satellite telephone while the tanker loaded crude at Ras Tannurah.