Despite the enormous publicity that piracy off the coast of East Africa received in the last decade, all has grown quiet on the Somalian front. From 2010 to 2015, there were a whopping 358 reported acts of piracy there; in the next five years, only eight. However, maritime crime in Asia has been on the rise. Pirate raids and armed robberies reached a seven-year high in the Singapore Strait in 2022, with 55 attacks recorded, and an even higher all-time high is expected this year.

The straits of Singapore and Malacca form a 1,000-kilometer channel of water, with Malaysia and Singapore to the north and Indonesia to the south. Much like the Suez Canal, conditions in the straits can be tricky: at one point, the waterway narrows to a mere 600 meters, and at another, its depth decreases to 25 meters. Nonetheless, as many as 300 ships pass through each day, carrying as much as half of all global trade annually.

An attack on an oil-bearing ship can theoretically result in the loss of thousands of barrels, as in the 2014 hijacking of the Orapin 4, which left its Thai owners bereft of 3,700 metric tons of oil, valued at $1.7 million. Even though most attacks are carried out by unarmed men, nearly two-thirds of incidents reported in Asia resulted in successful thefts. Stolen oil and gas can bring in millions of dollars on the black market, making the risk worth it for plenty.