The United Nations has successfully transferred most of the oil stored on the rusting supertanker FSO Safer, located off war-torn Yemen, to a replacement vessel in an effort to prevent a potential catastrophic spill.
The operation involved moving 1.14 million barrels of Marib light crude from the 47-year-old FSO Safer to the new tanker, named Yemen, over the course of the past week. A
ccording to the UN resident coordinator for Yemen, David Gressly, more than half of the oil has been transferred in the past seven days, with the entire operation expected to be completed within three weeks.
The UN initiated this $143 million transfer project to mitigate the risk of an environmental disaster, estimated to cost $20 billion to clean up, and to avoid disruptions to shipping in the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Suez Canal, which could amount to billions of dollars per day.
Additionally, a spill could devastate coastal ecosystems, fishing communities, and vital ports in the region.
The FSO Safer has been anchored around 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the port of Hodeida since the 1980s and has not been serviced since the outbreak of war eight years ago between rebels and a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.
The aging vessel poses a significant threat due to its corroding hull and the large volume of oil it holds, which is four times the amount spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
