UN Secures Oil Tanker to Prevent Environmental Disaster

The United Nations announced today, Thursday, that it has purchased a large tanker to store approximately 1.1 million barrels of oil that will be transferred from the aging oil tanker "Safer" off the coast of Yemen in an effort to avoid an environmental catastrophe that could devastate the Red Sea and the Yemeni coast. David Gressly, the UN resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, told reporters, "We have already raised $95 million. We expect to need another $34 million to complete the project." Meanwhile, Achim Steiner, the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, confirmed that they have secured the ship and expect it to set sail next month. He stated, "We hope, if everything goes according to plan, that the transfer from ship to ship will actually begin in early May." The giant tanker Safer, which served as a floating storage and offloading facility, is anchored off Yemen's Ras Issa oil terminal in the Red Sea. Storage, unloading, and maintenance operations on the vessel have been halted since 2015 due to the war in Yemen.