Non-Subscriber Extract
JTIC briefing: LNG tanker terrorism
03 August 2007
As the global market for liquefied natural gas (LNG) continues to expand rapidly, with ever more carriers ploughing the oceans, there is still concern that terrorists will attack LNG infrastructure. Fears that terrorists will use an LNG carrier to create an explosive vapour cloud over a city are misplaced, according to US studies, but LNG carriers still present tempting targets for publicity-seeking terrorists.
The threat from maritime terrorist attacks was demonstrated on 12 October 2000 when a small boat loaded with explosives rammed the USS Cole in Aden harbour. Two years later, the same tactic was used against the oil tanker Limburg, which was rammed several miles off the Yemeni coast. One crewman was killed and several thousand barrels of oil spilled in an attack that seemed intended to disrupt oil supplies.
The US government holds Al-Qaeda operative Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri responsible for masterminding both attacks. He is currently incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Nashiri provided his interrogators with information on Al-Qaeda's operational planning for attacks on supertankers, according to one unnamed Western counter-terrorism official cited by the Lebanese Daily Star. The newspaper quoted the official as saying: "They actually have a naval manual on this. It tells them the best places on the vessels to hit, how to employ limpet mines, fire rockets or rocket-propelled grenades from high-speed craft and turn liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers into floating bombs."
Richard Clark, the former White House counter-terrorist chief, fuelled the concern when he wrote in his 2004 book Against All Enemies that Al-Qaeda terrorists from Algeria had arrived in the US on board LNG tankers docking in Boston harbour. Clark speculated: "Had one of the giant tankers blown up in the harbour, it would have wiped out downtown Boston."
Although Clark's assertion that Al-Qaeda operatives arrived on an LNG tanker was later disputed by the FBI's Boston Field Office, his description of the threat was soon magnified by the press, which described the theoretical explosion of an LNG carrier as akin to that of a "small nuclear" device.