A United Nations agency said on Friday it had completed the removal of around one million barrels of oil from a degrading tanker moored off the coast of Yemen.
“It is a major moment of having averted a potentially catastrophic disaster,” Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN’s Development Programme, which oversaw efforts to salvage the oil, said via Reuters.
Officials from the UN – as well as various activist groups – had warned for years that the decaying Safer vessel off Yemen’s Red Sea coast was at risk of rupturing or exploding, with severe humanitarian and environmental implications for the entire Red Sea coastline.
The cargo ship, which has been moored off Yemen for more than 30 years, has not been adequately maintained since the early stages of the Yemeni Civil War that began in late 2014.
“It was literally until the last minutes that we looked at this operation as one that had to ensure the highest degree of preparedness of risk mitigation,” Steiner added, according to the report.
The UN official described how more than $120 million had been raised by the agency to fund the operation, which also required the purchase of a second ship to transfer to the fuel, as well as mitigation efforts on standby in the event of a spill.
The salvage crew took 18 days to complete the transfer of oil in a coastal zone, littered with sea mines, working amid sweltering summer temperatures and strong currents.
“The best end to the story will be when that oil actually is sold and leaves the region altogether,” Steiner said. The warring sides in the Yemen conflict had blamed each other for obstructing efforts to safely remove the oil.
However, there is still no firm indication as to how a transaction involving the oil will be processed. UN officials are set to begin negotiations with the conflicting groups in Yemen to determine a proceed-sharing deal for the crude, which is majority owned by the Yemen state gas and oil company SEPOC, Reuters said on Friday.
Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when the Houthi militant group seized the capital, Sanaa, forcing the government into exile. An international coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened in 2015, in a bid to reinstall the previous leadership, launching a years-long bombing campaign.
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