Tanker owners seek missile defence

Press, 26 August 1986, Page 12

Tanker owners seek missile defence

NZPA-Reuter Bahrain Ship owners are considering the use of antimissile systems aboard Gulf-bound tankers after the latest upsurge of attacks in the Iran-Iraq war. Shipping agents and salvage experts in .the Gulf said yesterday that merchant ships were looking at technology developed during the Falklands War, when British warships proved highly vulnerable to Argentina’s Frenchmade Exocet missiles. Some tanker crews entering the Gulf had, until recently, been surprisingly ill-informed about the danger of attacks on shipping by both sides in the war, agents said. ; But since Iraq’s devastating surprise attack on an Iranian oil terminal at Sirri Island on August 12, seriously damaging three tankers and killing at least 17 seamen, shipping owners have been considering new methods of defence. This year alone, 57 vessels have been attacked and damaged in the Gulf. At least 38 merchant seamen have lost their lives.

After devastating attacks by Iraqi jets on the Kharg Island oil terminal, Iran chartered a fleet of tankers to shuttle oil to Sirri, about 500 km to the east, where export tankers from outside the Gulf take on their cargoes of crude.

But the huge, slow-mov-ing tankers are easy targets for Iraqi jets, sometimes armed with the deadly Exocet missile. One shipping agent said European weapons manufacturers had been canvassing companies in the Gulf region, offering missile defence systems.