Bin Laden Files Discuss Attacking Oil Tankers

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 20, 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) — Files belonging to Osama bin Laden discussed the idea of hijacking oil tankers and blowing them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world’s economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, American officials said Friday.
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United States officials said the tanker idea, included in documents found in the compound where Bin Laden was killed nearly three weeks ago, was little more than a fantasy.
But the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a confidential warning to police departments and the energy industry on Friday. The alert said that Al Qaeda had sought information on the size and construction of oil tankers, had decided that spring and summer provided the best weather to approach the ships, had determined that blowing them up would be easiest from the inside and believed that an explosion would create an “extreme economic crisis.”

“We are not aware of indications of any specific or imminent terrorist attack plotting against the oil and natural gas sector overseas or in the United States,” a Homeland Security spokesman, Matthew Chandler, said in a statement on Friday. “However, in 2010 there was continuing interest by members of Al Qaeda in targeting oil tankers and commercial oil infrastructure at sea.”