People, by and large, are not known for encyclopedic memories. Ask anyone about the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and he might vaguely remember something about a Coke can and a porn actor of legendary appendage. Mention BCCI, S&L’s, and 90210, and you’ll harvest a blank stare.
Sure, that’s news from a decade and a half ago. Most of what happened back then probably ought to be forgotten, as quickly and completely as possible. After all, contrary to populist philosophy, history does not exist for the purpose of “teaching” us something.
Still, there are certain milestones in the passing of time that may serve as a crib sheet of kinds, to remind us of how certain mechanisms play out, time and time again.
One of these markers in coming up on October 6. It is the third anniversary of an al Qaeda bombing that barely made it into the mainstream consciousness.
That day, a small, explosives-packed fishing boat approached a French-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden, three miles off the Yemeni shore. The Limburg carried 300,000 barrels of Iranian crude and nineteen crewmen.
The blast ripped a hole into the ship, causing 90,000 barrels of oil to pour into the sea, polluting 45 miles of Yemeni coast. One crewman died. The others were rescued from the burning tanker by Canadian oil workers. No remains of the terrorists were recovered.
A week later, an al Qaeda communiqué bragged that it had cost less than US$1,000 to cripple a supertanker.
What never made it into the media coverage was the economic fallout of this attack. “War risk surcharges” bills from shipping insurers shot up by 300%, or US$150,000 per ship bound for a Yemeni port. Business at Yemen’s ports dropped by over 50%, costing the country over US$4 million per month in lost fees. But that’s not the half of it! Kenneth Timmerman, in his book Shadow War (Regnery, 2004), writes:
“Still, Americans feel the price of al Qaeda’s attempted seaborne terrorism at the pump. One of the reasons that gasoline prices have climbed so sharply since 2001 is the attack on the Limburg and the ever-present threat of attacks like it.”
That, of course, was in the days when a barrel of oil would set you back 30 bucks.
Given the increased speculative pressure on oil, I’d hope oil companies by now have equipped their tankers with surface-to-surface missiles and a “shoot first, ask questions later” letter of absolution: A US$1,000 investment by al Qaeda at this point would be able to set oil prices soaring to US$90 or even US$100 a barrel… erasing any hope for economic growth in most of the infidel economies.
J. Christoph AmbergerExecutive Publisher
The Taipan Group’s247profits e-Dispatch Team
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