WASHINGTON — Intelligence seized from Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout suggested that al Qaeda is interested in attacking oil tankers, Homeland Security officials said, a discovery that has prompted the agency to warn industry officials and local law enforcement, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The warning comes on the heels of indications of continued interest by al Qaeda in attacking other favorite targets, including planes and trains.
“In 2010, there was continuing interest by members of al Qaeda in targeting oil tankers and commercial infrastructure at sea,” Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler said in a statement Friday. He added that “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,” and said “it is unclear if any further planning has been conducted since mid-last year.”
Last summer, a Japanese oil tanker was attacked while passing through the Strait of Hormuz, though it suffered only minor damage. Investigators concluded that was a terrorist attack.
The materials gathered by US Navy SEALs in the raid earlier this month in Abbottabad, Pakistan — including bin Laden’s personal journal — sketched a broad picture of targets the terror group would like to attack, but provided little detail about actual plans to carry out such missions, officials said. The targets revealed so far, including commercial aviation and railroads, have long been in al Qaeda’s playbook.
Oil tankers and oil industry infrastructure also have been a preferred target for al Qaeda and associated groups, in keeping with the militants’ stated goal of causing economic disruption to the West and to Arab regimes they consider hostile. In 2002, militants used a small skiff packed with explosives to blow a hole in the side of a French-owned oil tanker off the coast of Yemen in 2002.