A real floating bomb. Off Yemen, the oil tanker FSO Safer is loaded with more than one million barrels of crude oil. Abandoned since 2015, when the region fell under the control of Houthi rebels, it risks triggering one of the biggest oil spills in history at any time, Greenpeace warned on Thursday. Thus dramatically worsening the humanitarian situation in Yemen, already catastrophic.
Anchored some six kilometers off the port of Hodeida, in the west of the country, the FSO Safer is rusty, about 45 years old, and, left without maintenance for seven years, it is rapidly deteriorating. An explosion or a leak of its cargo would have “consequences much more widespread, more serious and more long-lasting than previously available information suggested”, emphasizes the environmental NGO. For example, if these 140,000 tons of oil spilled, it would represent an oil spill four times worse than that of the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker that ran aground in 1989 not far from the coast of Alaska which had caused the one of the worst disasters of its kind.
political inaction
If the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) did try to alert the UN Security Council in the summer of 2021 of the imminent danger, the negotiations with the Houthi rebels, who control the northern majority of the country as well as the port of Hodeida, have not yet made it possible to find a solution to secure the ship. The Houthis claim full control of oil revenues on the ship, valued at $80 million.
International inaction would therefore be more political than technical, denounces Paul Horsman of Greenpeace International. “The technology and expertise to transfer the oil to other tankers exists, but despite months of negotiations, we are still at an impasse”he laments, while recalling the moral obligation of governments and the oil industry to take action as soon as possible.
The threat is compounded by the situation in Yemen, a poor country on the Arabian Peninsula ravaged by war and facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. According to Greenpeace, if the contents of the tanker were to spill into the sea, this would lead to the closure of the ports of Hodeida and Salif through which 68% of the humanitarian aid arrives, supporting more than 8.4 million people.
The desalination plants in Hodeidah, Salif and Aden could also be affected and cause the interruption of drinking water supply to around ten million people. Worse, the entire supply of the Red Sea region could be contaminated with oil in just three weeks.
Furthermore, the destruction of the ecosystems of the Red Sea would endanger fishing and therefore the food security of more than 1.7 million Yemenis, already victims of famines. This particularly vulnerable global biodiversity hotspot is home to many endemic species and sensitive habitats such as sea grass beds, mangroves and coral reefs.
Only solution: remove the oil
In the event of an explosion of the oil, which contains toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, millions of people in Yemen and neighboring countries could be exposed to very high levels of air pollution.
Finally, the leak could also reach neighboring countries, in particular Djibouti, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia, countries at the head of the coalition which is pounding Yemen to defeat the Houthi rebellion. This would risk disrupting shipping routes to and from the Suez Canal and jeopardize tourism in the region, as well as local economies.
So initially, a containment boom could be deployed around the FSO Safer, to contain the spread of hydrocarbons in the event of a leak. An insufficient solution in the short and long term: only the withdrawal of oil is a lasting solution. In the meantime, Greenpeace is already preparing to intervene in the event of an oil spill.