UN buys supertanker to avoid oil spill in Yemen

Dhe United Nations have announced the use of a tanker they bought to avoid an oil spill off the coast of civil war-torn Yemen. The head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Achim Steiner, said in New York on Thursday that his organization had signed a purchase agreement with the company Euronav for a large tanker that could hold more than a million barrels of oil.

Steiner spoke of a “major breakthrough” in the efforts to prevent an environmental catastrophe caused by the oil tanker “FSO Safer”, which has been anchored in front of a Yemeni port for years and is rotting away. The UN mission counters the “risk of an ecological and humanitarian disaster on a massive scale”.

According to the UNDP chief, the supertanker is scheduled to set off for Yemen in April after undergoing routine maintenance while still in China. If everything goes according to plan, the pumping of the oil from the “FSO Safer” could begin in early May.

The FSO Safer has been anchored off the rebel-controlled port of Hodeida since the outbreak of civil war in Yemen in 2015 without being serviced. The 47-year-old ship stores 1.1 million barrels of crude oil (about 175 million liters). UN experts have expressed fears in the past that the ship could break apart. They estimated the costs of the resulting oil spill at the equivalent of 19 billion euros.

The amount of oil on the “FSO Safer” is four times the amount that spilled into the sea in 1989 after the “Exxon Valdez” accident off the US state of Alaska. The resulting oil spill is still considered one of the most devastating environmental disasters in history.

The United Nations had been looking for a solution to the “FSO Safer” for years. After unsuccessfully evaluating other options, they decided, in an unusual move, to buy a tanker themselves.