The 19-day operation will pump more than a million barrels from the rusting Safer, which was abandoned more than eight years ago, to a nearby backup ship.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the UN took on the delicate operation because an oil spill would mean an environmental disaster for the region.
‘Ticking Time Bomb’
“The United Nations has launched an operation to defuse what may be the world’s largest ticking time bomb. That is a All-man-on-deck mission and the culmination of almost two years of political preparationFundraising and project development,” said the UN chief.
UN officials have warned for years of the possibility that the 47-year-old tanker could rupture and explode north of the Yemeni port of Hudaydah.
The supertanker holds four times as much oil as the Exxon Valdez — enough to make it the fifth largest oil spill by a tanker in history.
Existential sea threat
UNDP warned that a massive oil spill from the Safer would destroy much of the Red Sea’s marine life. Speaking to reporters in Geneva, spokeswoman Sarah Bel expressed her concern for the fishing communities on Yemen’s Red Coast, which are already in a crisis-ridden situation as an oil spill would fear it.200,000 people will immediately destroy their livelihoods” and “It would take 25 years for fish stocks to recover.”
She described the operation as the first of its kind and exercised caution during this “emergency phase” but assured reporters that everything had been prepared to “ensure success”.
FSO Safer has been moored about 4.8 nautical miles southwest of the Ras Issa Peninsula on Yemen’s west coast for more than 30 years. In 2015, production and maintenance of the tanker was halted due to the eight-year conflict between a pro-government Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels. As a result, the ship is now beyond repair.
The FSO Safer is located off the west coast of Yemen.
Humanitarian disaster and environmental disaster
According to the UNDP, an oil spill would result in the closure of all ports in the region and cut off food, fuel and other life-saving supplies for Yemen – a country where 80% of the population already depends on aid.
The UN chief warned against it The cost of a cleanup alone would be $20 billion and said that shipping to the Suez Canal could be disrupted for weeks.
He praised the project’s cross-UN collaboration and highlighted the “tireless political work” that the operation entailed “in a country devastated by eight years of war”. However, this was only a “milestone along the way” as the next step is to attach the replacement vessel to a special safety buoy.
The UN Secretary-General has asked for an additional $20 million to complete the project, including scrapping the safers and removing any remaining environmental threats to the Red Sea.
