Time is running out to avert a preventable catastrophe involving the FSO Safer, one which would have devastating consequences for the people of Yemen
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Disaster is looming off the west coast of Yemen. A huge, decaying oil tanker, holding more than a million barrels of crude oil, is in a critical state; at any moment it could break apart, catch fire or explode. Multiple attempts to resolve this crisis-in-the-making have failed and now, with a solution in sight, the funding needed for the salvage operation has fallen short.
The FSO Safer, one of the largest oil tankers ever built, is moored in the Red Sea to the north of Yemen’s principal port and fourth-largest city, Al Hudaydah. For years, it operated as a floating storage facility for the crude oil that flowed in from the pipelines of the Marib oilfields. Since the start of Yemen’s ongoing civil war in 2014, however, the Safer has been all but abandoned. Dilapidated and disintegrating, the 46-year-old vessel’s main systems have all broken down, including, crucially, a system designed to pump inert gas into the oil chambers to prevent an explosion. If, for any reason, it sinks, the resulting oil spill would be four times the size of that from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
Since September 2021, David Gressly, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, has been working to find a solution. Technically, it’s not a huge challenge. ‘They’ve dealt with bigger problems,’ Gressly says of SMIT Salvage, the company tasked with siphoning the oil from the Safer and which, in March 2021, freed the Ever Given container ship after it ran aground, blocking the Suez Canal. Instead, it’s been a political problem, but in March 2022, UN negotiators finally made a breakthrough and an agreement ‘in principle’ was made with authorities in Sana’a, who control the area where the vessel is located.
The new plan involves the installation of a long-term replacement vessel and, in the meantime, a four-month emergency operation to transfer the Safer’s oil to a temporary secure vessel. Although the full cost of the plan is US$144 million, only US$80 million is needed to mobilise both a salvage company and a secure vessel to get the oil off the Safer. Four months after the plan was first agreed and following a round of pledges from UN member states, the fund was still more than US$20 million short. So, in June, in an unusual move, Gressly turned to crowdfunding to raise another $5 million to help get things moving. So far they’ve received $140,000.
Since launching the campaign, he’s fielded a lot of questions about the decision to ask for funds from the public. ‘We were never really expecting to receive huge amounts of money,’ he says, explaining that the greatest benefit would come from the publicity generated, which has led to further pledges from the UK and Denmark. Gressly hopes that these incremental contributions will add up to the required total. ‘If we don’t reach the US$80 million threshold, we can’t start.’
If the Safer leaks, the impact of the oil spill is expected to be truly catastrophic, destroying coral reefs, coastal mangroves and marine life across the Red Sea. Projected scenarios suggest that, in the immediate weeks after a spill, a sizable section of Yemen’s 700-kilometre Red Sea coastline would be affected, as well as the coasts of Saudi Arabia and Eritrea. Longer term, depending on the conditions at the time of the spill, oil could drift to the neighbouring countries of Djibouti, Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Sudan.
Coastal communities would be the hardest hit. Before the war, fishing was a major export industry for Yemen and it continues to provide income and food security for a population already on the brink of famine; 19 million people (60 per cent of the population) are projected to face acute food insecurity over the next four months. The spill would wipe out the remaining 200,000 fishing jobs almost overnight – fish stocks would take 25 years to recover – and close the ports of Al Hudaydah and Saleef, cutting off food, fuel and life-saving supplies. It would clog desalination plants that provide water for roughly 10 million people and, in the event of a fire, millions could be exposed to highly polluted air. At an international level, the spill would cause disruption to tourism in the Red Sea area and to shipping routes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait and Suez Canal.
As of early August, the UN still hadn’t reached its US$80 million goal. The ideal window to start work on the Safer has now passed. Come winter, weather conditions will heighten the risk of the vessel breaking up. ‘It’s really at its end stage right now,’ says Gressly. ‘So it is just a matter of time. We could get through this season, but we don’t know that.’
Gressly admits that raising the money has been more difficult than he expected, but puts this down to governments’ limited budgets for disaster prevention. ‘If they needed to mobilise money for an emergency response to an oil spill, they could do that.’ According to a 2021 UNDRR report, only a fraction of the money allocated for humanitarian aid goes towards risk reduction measures – roughly US$5 of every US$100 spent. But tens of millions of dollars spent on the Safer now would save money in the future. The cost of a clean up alone is estimated at US$20 billion.
