Suspected pirates have hijacked an oil-tanker carrying 945,000 barrels (135,000 metric tonnes) of crude oil destined for Indonesia in the Arabian Sea off Oman, news agencies and Indonesian officials said on Friday.

The vessel, M/T SMYRNI, a Liberian flagged tanker, is owned by a Greek company. It lost contact with Dynacom Tankers Management, which manages the vessel, on Thursday at 6:15 p.m. Jakarta time. There has so far been no demand for ransom issued.

“The Liberian-flagged Tanker, the M/T SMYRNI, is carrying a cargo of 135000 MT of crude oil,” Reuters reported from Nairobi, quoting the manager of Dynacom.

At the time of the attack, the tanker, which began its journey in Turkey, was heading toward Somali waters, a notoriously vulnerable area for pirate attacks. It was the first attack in more than a year in the Horn of Africa.

Meanwhile, Indonesian officials confirmed on Friday that the crude oil on the M/T SMYRNI oil tanker had been ordered by Indonesia from Azerbaijan, a major oil producer in the South Caucasus. The oil’s market price is more than US$130 million.

State-owned oil and gas company Pertamina said it had not suffered any financial loss from the attack on M/T SMYRNI, which was destined for its oil refinery in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan.

Pertamina’s senior vice president (shipping) Suhartoko confirmed that the tanker did not belong to Pertamina.

“Pertamina didn’t suffer any losses but we will have to purchase the crude oil again,” Suhartoko told Antara news agency.

Based on the oil purchase contract, Suhartoko said Pertamina would only have paid after the delivery.

“The payment [for the oil] was due to be made only after the tanker reached Balikpapan. Therefore, we didn’t suffer any losses,” he said.

Azerbaijan has become a major crude supplier to Indonesia in recent years. Indonesia bought $1.76 billion of crude oil from Azerbaijan in 2011, a huge jump from $894.73 million in 2010. Oil imports from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, were just $98.47 million in 2007. Pertamina’s subsidiary Petral buys crude oil from Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company Socar. Both Petral and Socar have offices in Singapore.

“Azerbaijan is one of the biggest suppliers of crude oil to Indonesia after Saudi Arabia,” Azerbaijan Ambassador to Indonesia Tamerlan Karayev told The Jakarta Post recently.

In 2011, according to the Central Statistics Agency, Azerbaijan ranked second-biggest crude oil supplier

to Indonesia after Saudi Arabia, which sold $4.47 billion worth of oil to Jakarta.

Meanwhile, State-owned Enterprises Minister Dahlan Iskan was surprised after hearing the news from reporters on Friday. “I will immediately study the situation. I would like to know what has happened,” Dahlan told detik.com.

The nationalities of the tanker’s crew as well as its assailants remain unclear. According to the International Maritime Organization, Somali pirates are currently holding 17 ships and close to 300 crew members.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

SEOUL - Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) announced yesterday that they will step up checks on talent agencies, and create a database containing information on all talent agencies in the country, reported Korean media.

This move will allow young aspiring entertainers and their parents to verify if the agencies they are dealing with are legitimate ones.

Created with the help of the Korea Entertainment Producers' Association, the database will apparently contain information like how many employees the company has and how many artistes it manages.

There are currently between 500 and 1000 talent agencies operating in Korea, which take in young trainees and groom them into stars.

Under the new rules, only those agencies which are able to prove they have the required assets to groom artistes, can register in the database.

Unregistered talent agencies will not be allowed to operate.

This announcement comes at a time when Korea's entertainment sector is booming, as entertainment companies reap hefty profits on the back of Korean pop culture's popularity overseas.

This has resulted in an unprecedented increase in the number of Korean youths who want to join a talent agency and get their shot at fame and fortune.

But they grossly outnumber the professional talent management agencies in the industry, and in their eagerness to go into showbiz, many fall prey to con artists who pose as talent agents.

The announcement also follows in the wake of a recent police investigation into a Korean talent agency head, who allegedly abused his position to sexually assault his company's female trainees - a case which had sent shockwaves through the Korean showbiz industry.

A spokesperson for the MCST said this initiative aims to create a "more responsible" entertainment industry without any "unqualified agencies" causing harm to aspiring performers. CHANNEL NEWSASIA

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

If Apple were to challenge its smartphone competitors to a contest with its all-conquering iPhone 4S, Samsung's Galaxy S would probably be the model thrown into the arena to compete.

A new, third version of the Galaxy S will be unveiled in Earls Court, London, on Thursday amid speculation that it could be the official phone for the 2012 Olympics, which Samsung is sponsoring.

It will be a flagship phone but one added to the many models offered by Samsung that now make it hard to catch in the smartphone race, according to some analysts. Juniper Research reported on Tuesday that Samsung overtook Apple again in smartphone sales in the first quarter "in what is increasingly becoming a two-horse race".

It estimated that the two companies provided 60 per cent of the 139m smartphones shipped worldwide, up from 46 per cent in the previous quarter. Samsung "may now have established a firm lead" with 47m units to Apple's 35m, Juniper said; although analysts have widely different estimates of Samsung sales, which are not specified by the company.

Samsung overtakes Apple, Nokia in phone sales

Apple still leads in handset revenues though, according to Juniper, with sales of $22.7bn in the first quarter compared with about $17bn for Samsung, including the Korean company's non-smartphones, or feature phones.

Samsung has produced a wide variety of smartphones running Android, Windows Phone and its own Bada operating systems. Screen sizes have varied wildly, ranging as big as the 5.3in Galaxy Note, a smartphone/tablet hybrid equipped with a stylus. In contrast, Apple has stuck to a 3.5in screen size since the iPhone's debut and sales are focused on the latest 4S model, although the 4 and 3GS versions continue to be available.

While Samsung has enjoyed success with the Note and built Google its own flagship smartphone in the Galaxy Nexus, it is the Galaxy S that has won the most praise from critics and proved the most popular with customers.

After the Galaxy S II was introduced last year, TechRadar blog gave it five stars and said it set a new bar for smartphones in 2011, while Engadget gave it 9 out of 10 and called it "the best Android smartphone yet" and "possibly the best smartphone, period".

Samsung sold 10m units in the first five months and, after it was introduced in the US in autumn, sales had reached 20m by February this year.

"The S II has been a phenomenon," says Ben Wood, mobile analyst with CCS Insight. "Its volumes have been eye watering and it really has been the making of Samsung, while other competitors have fallen away."

The blogosphere has been rampant with rumours of what the Galaxy S III will feature. It is expected to have Samsung's own Exynos quad-core processor, improved video performance, a screen size as large as 4.8in, possibly a 12 megapixel camera, an NFC chip for payments and data exchanges, while it will run the latest version of the Android operating system, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich.

"We're expecting a super-thin device with a stunning display and a top-of-the-line processor," said Mr Wood.

Mr Wood predicted it would quickly become the number-one selling Android smartphone but added that the true test of the device would come later this year when Apple launches its next iteration of the iPhone.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments