UN successfully transfers Yemeni vessel carrying millions barrels of oil

The United Nations has said that it has successfully completed a complex operation to transfer more than a million barrels of oil from an ageing supertanker off Yemen’s Red Sea coast onto a salvage vessel, averting a potential environmental catastrophe, Voice of America (VOA) reported.

“We have, I think against many odds, managed to complete an operation that many talked about for years,” UN Development Program Administrator Achim Steiner told reporters in a video call on Friday.

“Many were concerned it couldn’t really be done. Many questioned why it took the UN [so] long to implement it," he added.

The planning, fundraising and obtaining permissions from the local authorities took years. The actual transfer of the oil took 18 days of around-the-clock pumping, VOA reported.

Steiner noted that when the United Nations was asked to undertake the operation, there was no one else ready or prepared to do it.

The UN has raised about USD 121 million of the USD 143 million needed to purchase a large crude carrier, retain a global salvage company, enlist experts, insure a dangerous operation in a war zone and carry out complicated logistics, VOA reported.

The tanker was the subject of more than three years of appeals from the UN and environmental organizations who warned that a lack of maintenance during Yemen’s civil war meant the nearly 50-year-old vessel was at risk of spilling four times as much oil as happened in the 1989 disaster involving the Exxon Valdez off the coast of Alaska.

Experts said if the tanker leaked or exploded, the environmental and economic damage could have cost USD 20 billion.

The Safer was moored in an area controlled by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who have been at war with the Saudi-backed internationally recognized Yemeni government for eight years. The UN had sought access to the vessel for several years, but the Houthis withheld the necessary permissions and security guarantees until last year.

Raising the money for the USD 143 million operation further delayed it.

The United States welcomed the successful transfer operation, to which Washington contributed USD 10 million. It is one of 23 countries that have contributed to financing the operation. Funding has also come from the private sector and a crowdfunding campaign, VOA reported.

“This operation serves as a strong model for future international coordination and cooperation to proactively prevent crises before they occur,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

“We commend the UN and the Yemeni parties who came together to avert an environmental, economic and humanitarian disaster," he added.

Experts delicately handled the 47-year-old vessel, called the FSO Safer, working to remove the crude without the tanker falling apart, the oil exploding, or a massive spill taking place, CNN reported.

UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen David Gressly said that the operation utilised the skills of SMIT, the dredging and offshore contractor who assisted in removing the Ever Given ship, which blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week in 2021, VOA reported.

The team pumped between 4,000 and 5,000 barrels of oil every hour.

However, who gets the oil remains a controversial matter, CNN reported. The Red Sea is a vital strategic waterway for global trade. At its southern end lies the Bab el-Mandeb strait, where nearly 9 per cent of total seaborne-traded petroleum passes. And at its north is the Suez Canal that separates Africa from Asia.

The majority of petroleum and natural gas exports from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal pass through the Bab el-Mandeb, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

The sea is also a popular diving hotspot that boasts an impressive underwater ecosystem. In places, its banks are dotted with tourist resorts, and its eastern shore is the site of ambitious Saudi development projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars, VOA reported.

However, who gets to keep the oil is a question hanging all along. The tanker issue remains a point of dispute between the Houthi rebels that control the north of Yemen and the internationally recognized government, the two main warring sides in the country’s civil conflict.

While the war, which saw hundreds of thousands of people killed or injured, and Yemen left in ruins is far from resolved.

The ship had been abandoned in the Red Sea since 2015. The FSO Safer held four times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989 which resulted in a slick that covered 1,300 miles of coastline. A potential spill from this vessel would have been enough to make it the fifth largest oil spill from a tanker in history, a UN website said.