----- Original Message -----
From: Marc Azar
To: CBC Web News
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 8:20 AM
Subject: CANESI: U.S. military seeks to ship fuel to Mideast Gulf
LONDON, March 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. military is seeking
more oil tankers to move aviation fuel and diesel supplies to
military bases, one of them in the Middle East Gulf, shipbrokers
said on Friday.
Shipping sources said the chartering of oil tankers to carry
different military grades of fuel had intensified over the last
month.
"This pattern of chartering has been well-established post
September 11, but it is very active at the moment," a broker said.
Tanker brokers were among the first to detect signs of the U.S.
preparations for its strikes against Afghanistan after the
September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is touring Europe and the
Middle East to drum up support for possible military action
against Iraq, which some Western diplomats believe could
come as early as September.
A Norwegian broker said U.S. Military Sealift Command (MSC)
had issued a tender for an oil tanker to move 220,000 barrels
(30,000 tonnes) of diesel oil in March from "either Japan or
South Korea to discharge in the Gulf".
The source said late on Thursday MSC had issued another
tender for a tanker to move an equivalent amount of military jet
fuel from Yosu in South Korea to Sasebo in Japan.
Brokers said time charters were being used for the u.S.
purchases, a process by which ships are contracted for a
specified period of time, years in some cases, to avoid detection
on the spot market.
"It's a clever way for the United States to hide military purchases
and movements of fuel," one said
Brokers have said the U.S. military has already moved 100,000
tonnes of aviation fuel to Diego Garcia, a military base in the
Indian Ocean, this month. The U.S. uses Diego Garcia, which
belongs to Britain, for flights over Afghanistan.
Those ships carried JP-5 fuel, a safe high flashpoint fuel for use
on aircraft carriers to power F-14 and F-18 fighters.
Shipping brokers said they could not confirm whether the U.S.
military had yet fixed the vessels to move an additional 30,000
tonnes of aviation fuel sitting in South Korea to Sasebo in Japan,
and 30,000 tonnes of diesel also in South Korea to Diego
Garcia.
"There have been tenders but I don't know if they were fixed in
the end," one source said.
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