An international team completed the transfer of more than 1 million barrels of oil from a decrepit supertanker to a replacement vessel, averting what U.N. officials called the immediate threat of a massive spill.
The United Nations announced on Friday nearly all the oil aboard the F.S.O. Safer supertanker off Yemen's Red Sea coast was pumped onto a replacement vessel, the MOST Yemen, formerly known as the Nautica.
In March, the U.N. agreed to buy the Nautica for US$55 million to transfer the oil from the 47-year-old F.S.O. Safer, which nearly sank in 2020. The pumping operation, coordinated by the U.N. Development Program, began on July 25.
UNDP hired marine salvage company SMIT, part of Netherlands-based Boskalis, for the ship-to-ship oil transfer, which took 18 days. It extracted as much of the 1.14 million barrels of oil as possible, U.N. officials said, leaving less than 2% aboard the F.S.O. Safer.
“There is still work to be done, but today we can say with confidence that the immediate threat of a spill has been averted,” said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner.
For the past several years the prospect of FSO Safer breaking up posed a major threat. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the oil transfer "prevented what could have been an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe on a colossal scale."
Guterres feared an oil spill in the Red Sea could have released four times the 260,000 barrels of crude oil spilled in Alaska's Prince William Sound by the Exxon Valdez supertanker in 1989.
The remaining oil, mixed with sediment, will be removed during a final cleaning and scraping of the F.S.O. Safer to ensure it no longer threatens the Red Sea, said David Gressly, the U.N.'s resident and humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.
Gressly has overseen the operation since 2021 with help from the International Maritime Organization, U.N. Environment Program and World Food Program.
“A remarkable global coalition came together under the U.N. umbrella to prevent the worst-case scenario of a catastrophic oil spill in the Red Sea," he said. "We need to finish the work the UN started."
