(Captain Prabhat Kumar Goyal, November 16, 2008) The MT Stolt Valor was a Hong Kong-flagged ship that was hijacked while in the Designated Safety Corridor[2] within the Gulf of Aden, approximately 38 nautical miles (70 km) away from the coast of Yemen, while heading from the United States south through the Gulf towards Asia.

[4] Area coalition forces arrived too late to avert the hijacking which occurred at 10:16 UTC on September 15, 2008 by Somali pirates.

[7] The ship was carrying 19,800 metric tons of phosphoric acid, loaded in Morehead City, North Carolina, United States, at time of capture.

[1] On March 15, 2012, an explosion and subsequent fire occurred on board Stolt Valor while she was 27 nautical miles (50 km) off Jubail, Saudi Arabia.

[10] The fire was eventually extinguished and all pollutants - both chemical cargo and fuel - later removed, but the ship was forced to drift in the Gulf for several months before authorities in Bahrain offered it a port of refuge.