Overview

The UN has initiated a 19-day operation to extract oil from a 47-year-old decaying supertanker in order to prevent a potential catastrophic oil spill. The tanker, called Safer, has been stranded off Yemen’s Red Sea coast for over eight years due to the civil war in the region. The conflict has prevented the necessary maintenance of the vessel since 2015.

Risk of Oil Spill

The accumulation of oil in the tanker has raised concerns about a potential oil spill that could be four times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez leak, which was the second-largest oil spill in U.S. history. The UN estimates that such a spill would result in $20 billion of cleanup costs, severe environmental damage to water and reefs along Yemen’s coast, and disruptions to the Bab al-Mandab strait in the Suez Canal. Additionally, it would take 25 years for the local fish stock to recover, according to the UN.

Oil Transfer Operation

At 10:45 Yemen time on Tuesday, the oil from the tanker Safer began to be transferred to a U.N.-owned vessel called Yemen (previously known as Nautica). However, the operation still carries significant risks as it is conducted in open waters, and the infrastructure of the Safer tanker is considerably corroded.

Quotes

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated on the X social media platform (previously known as Twitter), “The @UN has begun a complex operation to transfer 1 million barrels of oil from a decaying tanker off the coast of Yemen. We need to keep working to defuse what remains a ticking time bomb & avoid what would be by far the worst oil spill of our era.”

David Gressly, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said, “The transfer of the oil to Yemen will prevent the worst-case scenario of a catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, but it is not the end of the operation. The installation of a CALM buoy to which the replacement vessel will be safely tethered is the next crucial step.”

Challenges

The U.N. launched its initiative to rescue the oil from the Safer tanker in 2019 but has faced difficulties in accessing the vessel due to the Houthi rebel group in Yemen. Ghiwa Nakat, executive director for Greenpeace MENA, expressed concern, “The neglected FSO Safer supertanker and its 1.1 million barrels of oil cargo have been a ticking time bomb since 2015, threatening a humanitarian, environmental, and economic catastrophe. It is only the heroic efforts of a small skeleton crew and a great deal of luck that disaster has not occurred. While the salvage operation has its risks, these are less than doing nothing.”