AQAP, al-Shabaab threat to oil?

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, July 19 (UPI) -- Close ties between Somalia militant group al-Shabaab and Yemen's al-Qaida franchise could threaten the shipment of millions of barrels of oil, an analyst said.

Intelligence officers say they are worried that al-Shabaab and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula could broaden the counter-terrorism threat in the Horn of Africa. AQAP has allegedly supplied weapons and training to their Somali counterparts.

Both groups operate on either side of the Gulf of Aden, a key shipping lane for as much as 5 percent of the world's oil shipments. The capture of an Emirati oil tanker by Somali pirates last week, meanwhile, brings the number of oil vessels held for ransom to 22, al-Arabiya notes.

James Dorsey, a senior fellow at the Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, writes for the Arab news agency that the two militant groups are threatened internationally but still pose a threat to global energy supplies.

"The two weakened groups no doubt pose a threat to shipping in and the flow of oil through the Gulf of Aden," he writes. "But their efforts to coordinate and extend their theater of operations are unlikely to do much to boost their popularity or resurrect a movement that faces an existential challenge it has yet to come to grips with."