By Jonathan Saul

LONDON, May 3 (Reuters) – Pirate gangs in West Africa are switching to kidnapping sailors and demanding ransom moderately than stealing oil cargoes as low oil costs have made crude tougher to promote and fewer worthwhile, transport officers stated on Tuesday.

Attacks within the Gulf of Guinea – a big supply of oil, cocoa and metals for world markets – have develop into much less frequent partly attributable to improved patrolling but additionally to decrease oil costs, based on an annual report from the U.S. basis Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP), which is backed by the transport trade.

“They have had to move towards a faster model and that faster model is kidnappings,” OBP’s Matthew Walje stated, noting that ransom payouts had been as excessive as $400,000 in a single incident.

“It only takes a few hours as opposed to several days to conduct the crime itself,” he instructed Reuters on the report’s launch in London. “Fuel prices have fallen, which cuts into their bottom line.”

OBP stated violence had additionally risen, together with mock executions, and final 12 months 23 folks had been killed by pirates there.

“A lot of people are dying from piracy – nowhere near that number died in the last few years in the Western Indian Ocean (due to Somali piracy),” Giles Noakes, of main ship trade physique BIMCO, instructed the briefing.

“We are particularly concerned by the issue,” stated Noakes, whose affiliation audits the OBP’s annual report.

Last month, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea agreed to determine mixed patrols to bolster safety.

Analysts say the pirates have emerged from Nigerian militant teams such because the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta and OBP’s Walje stated a rising drawback was the splintered nature of the varied gangs working in West Africa.

“It is more fractured than it would be off Somalia where there were a few major gangs and kingpins operating,” he stated.

OBP estimated prices associated to piracy and armed theft in 2015 within the Gulf of Guinea had been $719.6 million, 61 % of which was borne by the trade. The 2014 value was $983 million, 47 % of which was borne by the maritime sector, it stated. (Editing by Louise Ireland)

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