Safer is in its final stages of unloading
The United Nations announced that the process of transferring oil from the dilapidated tanker “Safer” to the replacement tanker “Yemen” has reached its final stage, with more than 70% of the crude unloaded.
“Today, 71% of the Safer tanker oil (824,179 barrels) has been transported,” said Achim Steiner, Director of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), adding that the United Nations Development Program is committed to working around the clock, seven days a week, to protect life and livelihoods, as he described it.
He continued, saying: The United Nations operation to stop the oil spill disaster in the Red Sea is in its final stage.
About two weeks ago, the process of unloading from the dilapidated oil ship Safer off the coast of Yemen to the replacement ship began.
On Monday, July 17, the replacement tanker “Yemen” (formerly Nautica) arrived at the Safer oil tanker site, in preparation for the start of withdrawing the cargo of the “Safer” oil tanker off the port of Hodeidah in the Red Sea, in an operation aimed at avoiding an environmental disaster.
The Safer tanker was built in 1976 as a giant oil tanker, that is, 47 years ago, and it was converted after a decade to become a floating storage and offloading facility.
The ship carries an estimated 1.14 million barrels of light crude oil. Production, unloading and maintenance operations aboard the Safer were suspended in 2015 due to the aggression and blockade on Yemen.
As a result, the safety systems on the tank deteriorated and the ship’s structure deteriorated significantly, and the absence of an effective system for pumping inert gas into the Safer oil tanks led to their exposure to explosion at any time, causing a major environmental disaster.
It has not undergone maintenance work since the beginning of the US-Saudi aggression on Yemen in 2015, which led to water leakage into its structure, which prompted the Sanaa government to request UN assistance to mediate in the maintenance.
Because of the ship’s location in the Red Sea, any leakage could also cost billions of dollars a day, as it would cause disruptions in shipping lanes between the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Suez Canal.
During the past years, the National Salvation Government in Sana’a has striven to resolve the Safer crisis, issuing several times warnings of catastrophic repercussions in the event of the explosion of the “Safer” oil tank, which “may extend to the Suez Canal.”
