The UN Development Programme (UNDP) said today it had begun a long-awaited project to remove more than 1mn bl of crude from a decaying floating storage and offloading (FSO) tanker off Yemen's Red Sea coast.
FSO Safer, which had been operated as a floating storage unit off Yemen since 1988, had not been maintained since 2015 because of the conflict in Yemen between the Saudi-backed government and the Houthi militia group. This saw the vessel decay to the point where it had "been at risk of breaking up for exploding for years," the UNDP said.
The tanker's ownership had also been contested since the start of the war.
After several years of UN-led negotiations with the different factions in Yemen, the operation to begin unloading began today in co-operation with marine salvage company SMIT, which is a subsidiary of Dutch services firm Boskalis. The UNDP said the crude aboard Safer is being pumped into another tanker, Yemen, in a ship-to-ship transfer that it expects will take 19 days to complete. Vortexa tracking data show Yemen, which was previously named Nautica, around 50km off the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.
The UNDP in April said a potential spill from Safer would have devastating environmental effects and would lead to the closure of Hodeidah and Saleef ports. It estimated the clean-up cost of such a spill at $20bn. UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Yemen David Gressley, who has played a leading role in the most recent efforts to remove the crude from Safer, said the operation began at 10:45 local time.
"The transfer of oil to the Yemen will prevent the worst-case scenario of a catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, but it is not the end of the operation," Gressley said. "The installation of a CALM buoy to which the [Nautica] will be safely tethered is the next crucial step."
