Egypt has welcomed the start of a UN team’s plan to siphon crude oil out of the hull of a decrepit tanker moored off the coast of war-torn Yemen.
In a statement released by the Foreign Ministry on Thursday, Egypt affirmed its full support to international efforts led by the UN to remove oil from the decaying tanker.
The statement praised the facilitation offered by the international alliance to support legitimacy in Yemen in a bid to preserve the maritime environment in the Red Sea and secure the safety of navigation in this vital area for the international trade movement.
The transfer of 1.14 million barrels of Marib light crude from the 47-year-old FSO Safer to the new vessel is expected to take “less than three weeks,” David Gressly, the UN’s resident coordinator for Yemen, said on social media.
The UN hopes the $143 million operation will eliminate the risk of an environmental disaster that it estimates would cost $20 billion to clean up.
Because of the Safer’s position in the Red Sea, a spill would also cost billions of dollars per day in shipping disruptions through the Bab al-Mandab Strait to the Suez Canal, while devastating coastal fishing communities, ecosystems and lifeline ports.
The Safer, a floating storage and offloading facility, has been moored around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the port of Hodeida since the 1980s.
It has not been serviced since war broke out eight years ago between Yemen’s Huthi rebels, who control the capital Sanaa and the waters where the Safer is positioned, and a Saudi-led coalition backing the internationally recognised government based in the southern Yemeni city of Aden.
The ageing vessel, with its corroding hull, is carrying four times as much oil as was spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.
