DUBAI: The United Nation has managed to secure insurance coverage allowing it to pump over one million barrels of oil from a decaying tanker anchored off war-torn Yemen that poses the risk of a catastrophic spillage.
According to AFP, the rusting FSO Safer, abandoned off the rebel-held port of Hodeida, has not been approached for service since the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country plunged into civil conflict eight years before.
David Gressly, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, said on Monday that salvage teams are near to initiating a ship-to-ship transfer of the vessel’s cargo, a move launched to avert a major oil leak.
Pumping Oil From The Tanker Crucial
In case of leaking into the Red Sea, a major shipping lane could cost about $20 billion to clear up, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has warned and would fear to mark one of the world’s worst ecological disasters.
UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said that the insurance was a critical element in enabling this salvage operation to proceed and without it, the mission cannot be further implemented
The operation would observe the private company SMIT Salvage to pump the oil from the Safer to the Nautica, a super-tanker the UN purchased for the operation.
“I think we are getting very close to the point where we could initiate the ship-to-ship transfer which would be the next and perhaps most critical phase,” Gressly told media on Monday, ahead of the Yemen International Forum in The Hague.
