Saturday, September 04, 2010
Two men who captained the supply ship Fast Servant are suing ExxonMobil and the company they worked for, Edison Chouest Offshore, claiming a fuel tracking system installed on their ship led to pirates attacking and injuring them off the coast of Nigeria in an area that has been plagued by piracy.
Co-captains Rex Blanton and Kevin Norris say ExxonMobil endangered them by equipping their ship with outdated radio communications equipment rather than satellite phones, thus allowing pirates to locate the ship, which they then stormed early in the morning of July 17 while the captains were trying to return to a secure rendezvous point after supplying an ExxonMobil oil rig.
The ship was equipped with a FuelTrax Monitoring System that allowed company officials to remotely monitor the vessel. Upon boarding the ship, the pirates disabled the FuelTrax System (by shooting it up) as a way of sending a message to ExxonMobil and Edison Chouest to not interfere with their thefts of fuel. Both captains claim they were pistol-whipped during their capture, as were other members of their crew, and Blanton was struck by a machete. Blanton and Norris have requested a jury trial.
-David Wallechinsky
Captains Blame ExxonMobil for Pirate Attack (by Cameron Langford, Courthouse News Service)
Rex Blanton and Kevin Norris v. Edison Chouest Offshore and Exxon Mobil Corp. (District Court, Harris County, Texas) (pdf)
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