According to the International Maritime Bureau in London, in the first quarter of 2011 pirate attacks reached record highs with 142 incidents occurring.

In particular, Somali pirates are responsible for the bulk of the attacks and their operations have increased in complexity, size, and daring. Using stolen cargo vessels as motherships, the Somali pirates have been able to venture further out to sea, at times attacking ships as far as 1,000 miles from the coast line.

To combat this growing threat, Jardine Lloyd Thompson, which insures roughly 15 percent of the world’s maritime cargo ships, is launching its Convoy Escort Program (CEP), which consists of a fleet of eighteen gunboats equipped with .50 caliber/12.7mm machine guns.

The firm’s gunships will escort merchant vessels through the pirate infested waters of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. They will be manned by former military personnel primarily from the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

CEP gunships would also work with naval forces in the area to help hunt pirates, but so far no country has agreed to allow the private firm to carry out its plans.

The European Union is currently operating in the Gulf of Aden as part of the international counter-piracy fleet and has not approved the insurance firm’s plans to begin conducting military operations of its own.

In addition, none of the countries along the Gulf of Aden have granted permission for CEP ships to sail in their waters, leaving the gunboats without permission to operate legally.

While the insurance firm waits for approval of its plan, it has already raised all the funds necessary and could be ready to begin escorting ships as early as this year.

Oil companies feel particularly threatened as the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean carries much of the world’s crude oil and pirates have been targeting tankers bound for the United States, Europe, and Asia.

According to Joe Angelo, the managing director of the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners (IAITO), piracy “is spinning out of control into the entire Indian Ocean.”

He said, “If piracy in the Indian Ocean is left unabated, it will strangle these crucial shipping lanes with the potential to severely disrupt oil flows to the United States and the rest of the world.”

Roughly half of the world’s oil supplies are transported by tankers on fixed maritime routes that often lead ships to travel through straits that can be as narrow as eighteen miles wide at some points making them ideal targets for pirates.

In 2008 an estimated 4 million barrels of oil a day passed through the Strait of Bab el-Mandab in the Gulf of Aden, which connects ships travelling from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea as well as those bound for the Suez Canal.

Piracy now costs the global economy somewhere between $7 billion to $12 billion a year and the average ransom per ship has risen to $5.4 million in 2010, up from $3.4 million in 2009.

As more shipping firms have turned to hiring private security contractors, the International Maritime Bureau has expressed concern about this growing trend.

Captain Pottengal Mukundan, the director of the International Maritime Bureau, said, “Ships are not an ideal place for a gun battle.”

He added, “While we understand that owners want to protect their ships, we don’t agree in principle with putting armed security on ships.”

Others like Joe Angelo of IAITO want to see stepped up government efforts to contain privacy.

“We want to see a significant increase in government will to eradicate piracy in this area, and not just contain it.”