Our latest security threat?

Last night, Somali pirates took control of an Italian tanker bound for the US with more than $200 million in crude oil on board, not to mention 25-member crew.

That 2 million barrels of crude oil constitutes 20% of our daily crude oil needs here in America, and there is no guaranty that the oil will be at its destination anytime soon, since it is still off the coast of Oman at this moment. This kind of a hazard, threatening a significant percentage of our daily needs in the most vital commodity we have, has to be one of our most pressing national security concerns right now, right?

I feel that piracy as a practice is wrong... illegal and immoral... but the level of threat to our nation now seems to be higher than almost anything else we could point at, doesn't it? Does anyone else feel this is a matter of the greatest concern for the US? To help put it in some perspective, let me explain it this way:

In Aug of 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the US Gulf Coast and reduced our ability to process and distribute crude oil by only 15% of our daily norms, and that was only for 11 days... yet the national price for a gallon of gas went up more than $1.20 across the board. What if as much as 20% of our crude oil needs were threatened (let alone seized) by pirates on a monthly basis? What would THAT do to the recovery of our economy and our ability to secure our national interests, both at home and abroad?

Very soon, I think, the US Navy is going to have to consider what it will take to put a real and measurable presence in the threatened shipping lanes off of East Africa and the Persian Gulf area to counter this threat, and how that presence will effect itself into the efforts to stop the pirates from taking these ships. The rate of pirate attacks since 2009 has been more than one ship seized a year... what if that were to escalate? What would it cost the US and the world if it went to one per month? What if one of these ships is "scuttled" or damaged during an attack? Another "Exon Valdese" disaster that the US will have to pay for?

As the nation with the most advanced and largest surface fleet in the world, I'd say the US Navy is going to have to take a big role in this problem... almost unilateral, by sheer necessity, in fact.