Pirates in the Gulf of Guinea have allegedly boarded and attempted to take control of a product tanker off the coast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo near Pointe-Noire, reports indicated this week.
The French and British monitoring agency, Maritime Domain Awareness for Trade Gulf of Guinea (MDAT-GoG), issued a warning about the alleged piracy incident, which has been followed up by further maritime warnings urging seafarers to avoid the area near the southern border of Congo and Angola.
Maritime Executive reports that details regarding the incident remain scarce, but both MDAT-GoG and private security agencies have been reporting that pirates approached and managed to board a product tanker overnight between March 25 and March 26. Reports suggest that there were between three and five armed pirates who gained entry onto the vessel and were attempting to hijack it.
According to MDAT-GoG, the incident was ongoing and the crew had taken refuge in the vessel’s citadel, while a rescue effort was being set in motion. It did not name the vessel because the crew remain in danger. The last reported position of the tanker was approximately 140 nautical miles west of Pointe-Noire.
The incident is the first confirmed boarding and hijacking of a vessel in four months. A South Korean-owned product tanker B Ocean was boarded near Cote d'Ivoire in November when pirates stole oil from the vessel and damaged equipment.
MDAT-GoG has issued five additional reports in the past 90 days for the west coast of Africa. Two were unsuccessful attempted boardings in the northern reaches of the Gulf of Guinea at the end of January and at the start of February near Cameroon. The other incidents were reports of theft aboard near Takoradi, Ghana, and Angola.
According to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) 2022 annual report, there was a decline to 19 incidents in the Gulf of Guinea in 2022, however the bureau called for continued vigilance, warning that the threat of piracy remained in the region.
