The transfer of over a million barrels of oil from an aging tanker off the coast of Yemen has been completed, avoiding an environmental disaster, the United Nations says.
FILE - Technical vessels are seen by the decrepit 'Safer' tanker on Monday, June 12, 2023, off the coast of Yemen. A senior United Nations official says a salvage team is set to begin siphoning oil out of the decaying tanker moored off the coast of Yemen. The transfer of more than a million barrels of oil from an aging tanker moored off the coast of war-torn Yemen has been completed, avoiding an environmental disaster, the United Nations said Friday.
Before the transfer, the Safer, which Yemen used as a floating storage and offloading facility, held four times as much oil as was spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska, one of the world’s worst ecological catastrophes, according to the U.N. It is moored 6 kilometers from Yemen’s western Red Sea ports of Hodeida and Ras Issa, a strategic area controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels who are at war with the internationally recognized Yemeni government.
“As much of the 1.14 million barrels has been extracted as possible,” the U.N. statement said. “However, less than 2% of the original oil cargo remains mixed in with sediment that will be removed during the final cleaning of the Safer.” “The U.N. urgently needs the international community and private sector’s financial support to fill the remaining $22 million funding gap needed to finish the job and address all remaining environmental threats,” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said.
He congratulated the company's salvage team for "carrying out the work under very challenging conditions in the Red Sea.”
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