Our UN team in Yemen issued an update on its initiative to prevent a massive oil spill from the decaying FSO Safer supertanker off the country’s Red Sea coast. On Saturday the replacement vessel Nautica sailed from Djibouti to the Safer site. All technical preparations and agreements have been finalized. The Safer, which holds an estimated 1 million barrels of oil, has been at risk of breaking up or exploding for years. A major spill from the vessel would result in an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Once the replacement vessel arrives, the oil aboard the Safer will be pumped out in a ship-to-ship transfer that is expected to take about two weeks to complete. The leading marine salvage company SMIT stabilized the Safer since arriving at the site on 30 May. This initiative is led by the UN’s Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, David Gressley, and our UN Development Programme (UNDP) colleagues, which contracted SMIT, are implementing the operation to remove the oil. The full press release is on UN Yemen’s website in English and Arabic.
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