Loading player
In the Red Sea, a few kilometers off the coast of Yemen, after months of negotiations, a complex operation has begun to remove 1.1 million barrels of oil from the FSO Safer, a tanker moored and abandoned at sea in 2015 due to the Yemeni civil war . The tanker is in bad shape and partially corroded by sea water, with risks of explosion, fire and sinking. If successful, the operation will help avoid a potential environmental disaster: the FSO Safer is located in the midst of a series of rich marine ecosystems that the oil spill could destroy.
The abandoned tanker is over 300 meters long and was built in 1976 in Japan. It was then sold to the Yemeni government in the 1980s to store oil for export. For years many people worked on the FSO Safer, even fromestero.
The tanker was abandoned in 2015, when Houthi rebels took control of part of the coast: the Houthis are Shia militias backed by Iran who have been fighting a war since 2014 against the Yemeni government, backed by a coalition of Arab states led by the Saudi Arabia. Once they took control of the coast, the Houthis stopped investing in the maintenance of the tanker, which has been out of fuel since 2017 and whose conditions have progressively worsened.
FSO Safer is located in the middle of a series of nature reserves and ecosystems precious for their biodiversity: the Farasan Islands, but also the Dahlak Islands and the Asir National Park, on the coast of Saudi Arabia. One studio published in the scientific journal Nature in 2021 he hypothesized the consequences of the possible spillage of the oil contained in the tanker into the sea: according to the study, within three weeks the oil could spread throughout the Gulf of Aden, making it unusable. About 17,000 boats and cargo ships pass through the gulf and the Bab el-Mandeb strait every year: in addition to the enormous environmental damage, there would therefore also be major consequences on commerce and maritime traffic in that area.
Spilling of oil into the sea could also lead to contamination and the potential closure of the various desalination plants located on the coasts of Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea, which allow almost 2 million people overall to drink safe water. A number of ports used to import food and other primary resources to the mainland would also be at risk of closure.
Attempts to reach FSO Safer to empty it of oil have been going on for years. Until now, the Houthis had always opposed it and had prevented foreign organizations and governments from accessing the tanker, perhaps to have leverage with which to obtain concessions in a possible peace process, or perhaps to discourage possible attacks by sea. The risk of it exploding makes the tanker a kind of «floating bomb», according to foreign government officials interviewed by the Wall Street Journal who over time have tried to reach an agreement with the Houthis to empty it. In turn, the Houthis have accused foreign governments of using the emptying as an excuse to plan a military operation in the area.
The operation that has just begun in the Red Sea is the result of an agreement reached in March 2022 between the Houthis and the United Nations, which purchased the tanker with which the emptying of the FSO Safer will be carried out.
The agreement was reached after long and delicate diplomatic operations, also facilitated by a cautious easing of the situation in Yemen: there have been exchanges of prisoners between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis and some diplomatic meetings held with the mediation of officials of the Oman, which borders both Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The fact that in the meantime, last March, Saudi Arabia and Iran re-established their diplomatic relations after seven years, in an agreement considered in many ways historic, probably contributed to the détente.
– Read also: There is some hope for a peace deal in Yemen
The situation was definitively unblocked with the intervention of Fahem Group, a Yemeni company that imports wheat through the port of Hodeidah, and with which the Houthis have agreed to dialogue. Fathi Fahem, the head of the company, he said al Wall Street Journal that in a series of talks his company managed to make the Houthis understand that spilling the oil contained in the FSO Saver into the sea would also harm them, for example by preventing them from exploiting the fishing industry or ports to export goods and resources to the ‘abroad.
The Fahem Group also organized a meeting in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, between the Houthis and SMIT Salvage, a subsidiary of the Dutch maritime construction and maintenance company Boskalis, which is currently engaged in the tanker emptying operation, coordinated by the United Nations Unite.
The agreement reached in March 2022 between Houthi and the United Nations provided for the operation to begin in the following 18 months. Last May, a group of 65 people went on an expedition on the tanker to carry out a series of checks and technical evaluations on how to proceed with emptying.
The tanker’s valves and pipes were checked to determine which systems could be used to pump the oil out, and inert gas was pumped into the tanks to reduce the risk of fire and explosion: the presence of inert gas is required for safety reasons , and is normally guaranteed by the on-board systems, which however in this case have been inactive for years. The external conditions of the vessel were also inspected with some dives, to verify that it could withstand any transfer of oil without breaking.
In concrete terms, the operation envisages that the FSO Safer will be flanked by a very large tanker, the Nautica, purchased by the United Nations, and that the tanks of the two ships will be connected by large pumps with which the oil will be transferred. Then Nautica will be transferred to a point where she will be tied to a reinforced buoy and anchored to the seabed, to remain there, with the function which had the FSO Safer, that of floating oil storage unit.
In all, it is estimated that the operation will cost the equivalent of almost 130 million euros. So far, the United Nations has managed to raise nearly 110 from a pool of around 20 countries, including Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, as well as the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers and some private donors.
After being emptied, the FSO Safer will have to be cleaned, towed and sold for scrap, thus avoiding both the dispersion of the oil and its sinking.
The operation should take a total of two weeks, but the risk that something will go wrong is quite high. The tanker is in particularly bad shape, many pipes and valves are now corroded by sea water, and the safety systems have been shut down for years. The tanker could easily break up during operation or explode, spilling oil into the sea.