HODEIDA (AFP) – The United Nations (UN) said it had successfully transferred more than one million barrels of oil from a dilapidated Yemeni tanker, removing the imminent risk of a spill.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “welcomes the news that the ship-to-ship transfer of oil from the FSO Safer to the Yemen replacement vessel has been safely concluded today, avoiding what could have been a monumental environmental and humanitarian catastrophe”, a statement said.
The milestone means that “the core aspect” of a years-long effort to address the threat posed by the Safer, often referred to as a “ticking time bomb”, is now finished, said UN Development Programme head Achim Steiner.
“That removes the imminent and immediate threat that had become the focus of attention across the whole world: a tanker that could break apart or explode in the Red Sea,” Steiner told AFP.
Yemeni doctor Main Ahmed, 49, told AFP Friday’s news was like “a weight lifted off our shoulders” for residents of the port city of Hodeida.
“I was always thinking about the risks of just going for a walk, especially since I live near the coast,” he said.
Yet the saga is not over. The UN has previously warned that even with its cargo removed, the Safer “will pose a residual environmental threat, holding viscous oil residue and remaining at risk of breaking apart”.
The project’s next phase, stripping and cleaning the Safer’s tanks and preparing it for towing and scrapping, is expected to take “anywhere between two to three weeks”, Steiner said.
The Safer, a floating storage and offloading facility, has been moored around 50 kilometres from Hodeida since the 1980s.
Now its oil has been pumped to a new, smaller tanker known as the Yemen that the UN purchased in March. As the operation began on July 25, experts warned that success was far from certain given scorching summer temperatures, ageing pipes and naval mines lurking in surrounding waters.
The UN had even arranged for a plane to be on standby “within a 90-minute flight radius” so it could “deploy chemicals from the air” in response to a spill, Steiner said.
All told, the UN has priced the operation at USD143 million, a fraction of the estimated USD20 billion clean-up costs in the event of a spill, to say nothing of billions lost to shipping disruptions through the Bab al-Mandab strait to the Suez Canal.
