The United Nations announced on Friday the completion of the withdrawal of more than one million barrels of oil from the deteriorating tanker "Safer" off the coast of Yemen in the Red Sea, thus averting a potential environmental disaster that would have cost $20 billion to remediate. Rescue crews worked for 18 days to empty the oil from the ship in a contested coastal area filled with naval mines, amid high summer temperatures and strong currents.
Achim Steiner, the head of the United Nations Development Programme, stated, "It is a significant moment where a potential disaster has been averted," adding that "we considered, even until the last moments, that this operation needed to maintain the highest preparedness to mitigate risks."
Steiner noted that "the best ending to the story is when this oil is actually sold and completely leaves the area." He mentioned that the United Nations raised over $120 million for the operation, which required purchasing a second tanker to offload the crude, and having a plane on standby to pump chemicals to disperse oil in case of a spill, along with documents with more than a dozen companies to insure the operation.
For his part, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres highlighted the prevention of "an environmental and humanitarian disaster" and urged donors to assist in completing the project. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the efforts made by the United Nations and the Yemeni parties that "came together to avert an environmental, economic, and humanitarian disaster," stating that the operation was a model of cooperation in international disaster prevention.
There is no agreement on how to proceed with such a deal. UN officials in Yemen will soon begin negotiations with conflicting groups in the country in an attempt to agree on how to share the revenues from the oil sale, the majority stake of which is owned by the Yemeni state company Safer. UN officials have warned for years that the entire Red Sea coast was at risk, as the tanker could potentially explode, leading to a spill that could exceed four times that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska. Maintenance operations were suspended in Yemen due to the war in 2015.
