The former involved the Liberia-registered bulk carrier, Ore Vitoria, the Malaysian-flagged tug Kien San 1 towing the barge Kien San 8 and the Vietnam-registered bulk carrier Eastern Star. All were underway around the Nipa Anchorage area when they were boarded by a group of four men. Nothing was taken however, and the ships' crews were unharmed.
The first incident occurred at 6.25am, the second at 10.42am and the last one at 3.53aam the following morning. Due to the similarity of methods of operation and the incident area, ReCAAP speculated that the robbers had simply hung around the area and moved from one vessel to the next when the previous attack had not yielded any results. It emphasised however that there was no evidence to substantiate that the same group was involved in all the incidents.
The last incident however is more ominous, with the Thai-registered product tanker Orapin 4, laden with 3,377 metric tonnes of diesel failing to arrive as scheduled at its destination. The vessel was scheduled to arrive on Thursday but has not showed up yet.
The owners had tried to contact the Orapin 4 at 12pm on May 28 via email but did not receive a reply. The last known position of the tanker was about 3.64nm north of Pulau Batam at 5.30pm on May 27.
ReCAAP urged vessels in the vicinity to look out for Orapin 4 and report any
sightings to the Royal Thai Navy Maritime Information Sharing Centre. There have been several previous incidents where tankers have been hijacked for their cargo. Last October a tanker carrying marine gas oil was hijacked off Pulau Aur to the northeast of Singapore and had its cargo stolen before being abandoned five days later.
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