UN Security Council to hold special meeting on July 15 to discuss crisis (File)
Dubai:
Abandoned oil tanker lying off the coast of Yemen with 1.1 million barrels of crude on board is severely deteriorating and could rupture at any time, with disastrous results for marine life in the Red Sea, warn the UN and other experts.
FSO Safer, 45, is anchored off the port of Hodeida under the control of Iranian-backed Huthi rebels, who have blocked United Nations efforts to send a team of experts to assess his condition.
In fact, a floating storage platform, it has hardly been maintained for five years since the start of the war in the country where the Huthis seized much of the north from the internationally recognized government.
The United Nations Security Council will hold a special meeting on July 15 to discuss the crisis after the water entered the engine room of the ship, “which could have led to a disaster,” said Friday on spokesperson for the United Nations, Stéphane Dujarric.
He said the prospects for a site mission have been restored and that if an inspection team is authorized on board, it will carry out light repairs and determine next steps.
“We hope that the logistical arrangements will be completed quickly so that this work can begin,” he said.
The government of Yemen, which has appealed for the UN to address the issue, has warned that the Safer could explode and cause “the greatest environmental disaster regionally and globally”.
Huthi chief executive Mohamed Ali al-Huthi said on Twitter last month that the rebels want assurances that the ship will be repaired and that the value of the oil on board is used to pay the wages of their employees.
The market value of oil is now estimated at $ 40 million, half of what it was before the crude prices plummeted, although experts say poor quality could push it even lower.
Like other economic and aid problems in Yemen, the fate of the oil tanker has become a bargaining chip, the Huthis being accused of using the threat of disaster to control the value of the cargo.
Yemeni Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed on Thursday called on the international community to punish the Huthis for preventing a UN inspection, and said the value of the oil should be spent on health and humanitarian projects.
“Time bomb”
Apart from corrosion of the aging tank, the essential work of reducing explosive gases in storage tanks has been neglected for years. Experts said the last problem appeared in May with a leak in a cooling pipe.
“The hose burst, sending water into the engine room and creating a truly dangerous situation,” said Ian Ralby, CEO of IR Consilium, a global marine consultancy that tracks the ship closely.
A team of safer exploration and production operations from Yemen, a state-owned oil company partially controlled by the Huthis, sent divers to repair the leak, narrowly avoiding the sinking of the ship, said Ralby.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned last week that if the tanker ruptured, “it would devastate the Red Sea ecosystem” and disrupt major shipping routes.
“The Huthis must allow access before the time bomb explodes,” he said.
The port of Hodeida is a lifeline for northern Yemen with 90 percent of all supplies passing through it. Any disruption would inflict new difficulties on a country that is once again on the brink of starvation after many years of conflict.
If the ship breaks, “you’re going to have two disasters,” said Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.
“There is going to be a bigger environmental disaster than almost any other similar genre … and it’s going to be a humanitarian disaster because this oil will make the port of Hodeida unusable,” she told AFP.
Yemen-based independent environmental group Holm Akhdar – in Arabic for “Green Dream” – has warned that an oil spill could extend from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.
The region’s ecology would need more than 30 years to recover from an oil spill of this size, she said in a recent report, adding that about 115 of the Red Sea islands in Yemen would lose their biodiversity and natural habitats.
In a country where the majority of the population already depended on aid to survive, around 126,000 fishermen, including 68,000 in Hodeida, would lose their only source of income.
IR Consilium said any rescue after an oil spill would be severely hampered by the coronavirus crisis.
“In the midst of a global pandemic and on the brink of a conflict zone, the chances of a rapid and adequate response are extremely low,” he said in a report.
Doug Weir, director of research and policy at the UK’s Conflict and Environment Observatory, said that without an independent assessment “it is impossible to determine when an incident could occur, nor its form and severity” .
“However, the risks are clear, and the longer the dispute continues, the larger they become, and the more complex and costly a rescue operation will be.”
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
