After months of preparation, an international team began removing up to 1.14 million barrels of crude oil from the decaying F.S.O. Safer supertanker off Yemen's Red Sea coast in a bid to prevent an environmental catastrophe.
The U.N.-led project entails pumping oil from the F.S.O. Safer, which has been at risk of breaking up or exploding, onto a replacement vessel dubbed the MOST Yemen, officials said on Tuesday. The ship-to-ship oil transfer is expected to last 19 days.
"The United Nations has begun an operation to defuse what might be the world’s largest ticking time bomb," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said.
"In the absence of anyone else willing or able to perform this task, the United Nations stepped up and assumed the risk to conduct this very delicate operation," he said. "This is an all-hands-on-deck mission and the culmination of nearly two years of political groundwork, fundraising and project development."
If the U.N. hadn't intervened, Guterres said, the tanker could have exploded or broken apart – which would have released as much as four times the 260,000 barrels of crude oil spilled in Alaska's Prince William Sound by the Exxon Valdez supertanker in 1989.
That would have devastated local marine life, he said, and wiped out fishing communities, cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, forced the closures of major ports and shut down the flow of food, fuel and life-saving supplies for millions.
"That is why we have been raising the alarm and working to mobilize support to avoid this nightmare," he said. "This operation required relentless political work in a country devastated by eight years of war."
Once the ship-to-ship oil transfer is done, the next step involves tethering the replacement tanker to a specialized buoy, then cleaning and scraping the F.S.O. Safer to ensure it is no longer an environmental threat to the Red Sea, according to David Gressly, the U.N.'s resident and humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, who has been tasked with solving the problem since Sept. 2021.
Threat 'recedes' as operation begins
Gressly, aboard the salvage vessel Ndeavor, said the transfer of oil to the MOST Yemen "will prevent the worst-case scenario of a catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, but it is not the end of the operation. The installation of a CALM buoy to which the replacement vessel will be safely tethered is the next crucial step."
The Catenary Anchor Leg Mooring, or CALM, buoy uses a pivot, called a turntable, that rotates around a vertical axis with the tanker moored to it. They are used to secure a tanker or offshore production farm to the seabed by anchors or piles.
In March, the U.N. agreed to buy the replacement vessel, a US$55 million crude carrier formerly called the Nautica, as part of an elaboration operation for removing the oil from the stranded supertanker moored off the coast of Yemen.
The operation has been further complicated by Yemen's largely dysfunctional government after years of regional proxy war starting in 2014 when the Iran-backed rebel Houthis overran the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north.
A Western-backed alliance of Sunni Muslim Arab nations, led by the Saudis, tried to prop up the internationally recognized government, but it fled into exile in Saudi Arabia. The conflict escalated into a regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, exacerbating one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
The 47-year-old F.S.O. Safer has been decaying for years and nearly sank in 2020. Donors have contributed US$115 million to carry out the U.N.-coordinated plan, but the world body says US$28 million more is needed to finish the work.
U.N. Development Program Administrator Achim Steiner said his organization and other U.N. agencies, including the International Maritime Organization, U.N. Environment Program and World Food Program, are working with international consultants with expertise in maritime law, insurance and environmental reviews.
“With every gallon of oil now being pumped off the Safer," he said, "the threat of a potential spill that has loomed over the people of Yemen, and indeed the countries and economies depending on the shared Red Sea ecosystem, recedes."
