Urgent UN mission to stop oil spilling from ‘time bomb’ tanker off war-torn coast
Salvage workers have stepped aboard an oil tanker described as a ‘‘floating time bomb’’ at the start of an ambitious project to prevent a million barrels of oil spilling into the Red Sea.
Specialists from the Ndeavour, a support vessel hired by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), set foot on the tanker, FSO Safer, for the first time on Wednesday afternoon, local time, the UN said.
They will assess the danger posed by the tanker, which is decaying but has been out of reach since the Yemen civil war started in 2014. If they decide it is physically safe, they will explore the oil storage areas and neutralise any buildup of gas, which has the potential to cause a devastating explosion.
In two to three weeks, the Safer could be assessed fit to start a shipto-ship transfer of its contents. In a highly unusual move, the UN has bought its own supertanker to take the crude oil it carries.
‘‘At every stage, we have to be prepared for surprises,’’ the UNDP administrator, Achim Steiner, said. ‘‘But this means that by early to mid-July the emergency phase of the operation should be complete.’’
For years, the Safer has been a sword of Damocles hanging over one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, flanked by the pristine but geopolitically sensitive coastlines of Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Most recently used to store Yemeni oil waiting for export, it sits 4.8 nautical miles off the coast near the port of Hodeidah. The port became a flashpoint in the civil war after Houthi rebels stormed the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. Despite long negotiations, the Iran-backed rebels refused to give security guarantees to any rescue effort, even as it became clear that the vessel, built in 1976, was on the verge of breaking up, rusting and taking on sea-water in its engine-room.
A recent rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which backs the Yemen government, has cemented a ceasefire, however. The Houthis relented, allowing the UN to prepare a rescue effort funded by oil companies, governments and an online crowdfunding appeal that raised US$300,000 (NZ$492,000) from the public.
The total cost of the operation, including buying the supertanker, is estimated at US$149 million (NZ$245 million), of which US$29 million is still to be found. ‘‘We hope that seeing the operation underway will prompt other donors to step up,’’ Steiner said.
A UN tender is out to tow the Safer away after it is emptied and cleaned, and to break it up for scrap. The value of the metal may allow the UN to recoup some costs.
The salvage operation has also been held up by rows between the two sides in the war over who owns the oil on board. In theory, its sale could have been used to pay for most of the rescue effort. In practice, the UN decided the money would be better spent on famine relief and reconstructing Yemen after the war, especially if it meant avoiding further delay.
David Gressly, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Yemen, said: ‘‘This is a great milestone, but we will not rest easy until the operation is completed.’’
The war has plunged Yemen, already the poorest country in the Arab world, into near-famine conditions.
The quantity of oil on board the Safer is four times that on the Exxon Valdez, which spilled its load in Alaska in 1989, the worst maritime oil disaster in history. A leak from the Safer would have shattered the livelihoods of 200,000 families on the Yemen coast, which heavily relies on fishing, and threatened Saudi Arabia’s hopes of developing a new tourist industry on the Red Sea.
The HSA Group, one of Yemen’s largest private businesses, which contributed to the funding, said the lives and livelihoods of millions of Yemenis would have been affected. Nabil Hayel Saeed Anam, its managing director, said: ‘‘A spill on the scale predicted by the UN would cost an estimated US$20 billion to clean up and have an unprecedented impact on Yemen.’’