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The United Nations (UN) announced on Thursday that it had signed an agreement to buy a very large vessel capable of transferring more than 1 million barrels of crude oil currently stranded on rusting tankers off the coast of war-torn Yemen.
The deal is the first step in the final operation to evacuate the cargo and eliminate the threat of major environmental damage from a possible oil spill or explosion.
Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Programme, told a press conference that the deal was signed with Euronav, the world’s largest independent tanker company, to secure the purchase of a large crude oil carrier for the venture.
The double carrier, which was found “after an intense search in a highly pressured global market,” is expected to sail next month to Yemen’s Red Sea waters and park next to FSO Safer, he said.
“If everything goes according to plan,” the transfer of crude oil from the ship will begin in early May, Steiner said.
The Japanese-made Safer was built in the 1970s and sold to the Yemeni government in the 1980s to store up to 3 million barrels of oil pumped from fields in Marib, a province in eastern Yemen.
The impoverished Arabian peninsula country has been wracked by civil war for years.
Yemen’s conflict began in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north, forcing the government to flee south, then to Saudi Arabia.
The following year, a Saudi-led coalition entered the war against the Houthis and attempted to restore the internationally recognized government.
There is no annual maintenance during the year
No annual maintenance has been carried out since 2015 on the ship, which is 360 meters long with 34 storage tanks. Most of the crew members, except for 10 people, were pulled from the ship after Saudi entered the conflict.
In 2020, internal documents obtained by The Associated Press showed that seawater had entered the Safer’s engine compartment, causing damage to the pipes and increasing the risk of sinking. Rust has covered the parts of the tanker and the inert gas that prevents the tank from collecting inflammable gas, has leaked out.
Experts say maintenance is no longer possible because the damage to the ship is irreversible, according to an Associated Press report.
The situation has raised fears of an oil spill or a major explosion that could cause an environmental disaster. The UN has repeatedly warned that the tanker could release four times more oil than the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.
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