The United Nations announced on Friday that it has completed the transfer of more than a million barrels of oil from an old ship abandoned off the coast of Yemen as part of an operation to prevent a massive oil spill in the Red Sea.
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Long described as a “ticking time bomb,” the 47-year-old FSO Safer had failed to prevail in eight years of war between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi-backed government. It threatened to explode at any time in front of Hodeida (West).
“The Secretary-General (Antonio Guterres) welcomes the oil transfer from FSO Safer to the replacement vessel, which was safely completed today and averted a potentially monumental environmental and humanitarian disaster,” said a United Nations press release.
Photo: AFP
This is the “essential” phase of the rescue operation on the oil tanker FSO Safer, Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), told AFP.
According to him, this success “eliminates the immediate and imminent threat that has become the focus of the entire world’s attention: an oil tanker that could break up or explode in the Red Sea.”
For Maïn Ahmed, a 49-year-old Yemeni, the announcement comes as a relief because the potential “environmental disaster” that the Safer represents “worries” Hodeida residents greatly.
“I’ve always thought about the risks of just walking, especially as I live near the coast,” the doctor told AFP.
“Today I feel like the load has been lifted from our shoulders and there is almost no danger left,” he added.
Next Step
However, the UN warned that the ship, which is still in danger of breaking, would pose “a danger (…) to the environment” even without oil cargo due to oil residues.
The next step in the salvage will be to clean the Safer’s tanks and prepare it for towing and demolition. This process is expected to take “between two and three weeks,” Steiner said.
But the United Nations is still about $20 million short, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday called on the international community and the private sector to step in to “finish the job and address any threats.”
An oil spill is said to have devastated wildlife, fishing villages and key ports in Yemen, a country already plunged into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises by the war, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced.
Such a disaster could also have disrupted international maritime traffic between the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the Suez Canal, which leads to the Mediterranean Sea, a strategic area for world trade.
Essential port
The Safer is located in front of the important port of Hodeida, through which much of the goods and humanitarian aid that three quarters of the population depend on is transported.
The aging ship, whose hull has rusted, was carrying 1.14 million barrels of crude oil, four times more oil than the Exxon Valdez, which ran aground off the coast of Alaska in 1989.
The oil was pumped onto a new, smaller ship, the Nautica, which the UN bought in March.
When the operation began on July 25, experts warned that success was anything but certain due to the extreme summer temperatures, but also the sea mines in the surrounding waters.
The UN even made sure an airplane was “within a 90-minute flight” so it could “airborne chemicals” in the event of a spill, Steiner said.
Overall, the United Nations estimated the operation at $143 million, a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated $20 billion clean-up costs that would have been incurred in the event of an oil spill.