According to the UN, a team is preparing to begin syphoning oil from a rusted tanker moored off the coast of Yemen

An international team will begin syphoning oil from the hull of a dilapidated tanker stranded off the coast of war-torn Yemen this week, according to a United Nations official. It will be the first concrete step in a multi-year plan to prevent a huge oil disaster in the Red Sea.

According to Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations development programme, more than 1.1 million barrels of oil stored on the ship known as SOF Safer will be transferred to another vessel purchased by the UN as a replacement for the ageing storage tanker.

“We have reached a critical stage in this salvage operation,” Steiner told The Associated Press on Saturday, hours after the salvage team successfully moored the replacement vessel beside the Safer tanker in the Red Sea. “In a sense, this concludes the month-long preparation phase.”

The rusted tanker is a Japanese-built vessel built in the 1970s and sold to the Yemeni government in the 1980s to hold up to 3 million barrels of export oil extracted from fields in Marib, an eastern Yemeni region. The ship is 360 metres (1,181 feet) in length and has 34 storage tanks.

The tanker is parked 6 kilometres (3.7 miles) from Yemen’s western Red Sea ports of Hodeida and Ras Issa, a crucial location controlled by Iran-backed Houthi rebels fighting the internationally recognised government.

Yemen’s war began in 2014, when the Houthi took control of the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north, forcing the government to evacuate to the south, then to Saudi Arabia. The following year, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia entered the war to battle the Houthis and restore control to the internationally recognised government.

Years of neglect

The vessel has been neglected for eight years, and its structural integrity has been damaged, putting it at risk of breaking up or exploding. According to internal records obtained by the AP in June 2020, seawater had entered the tanker’s engine area, causing damage to the pipes and increasing the risk of sinking.

For years, the United Nations and other nations, as well as environmental groups, have warned that a big oil spill — or explosion — could impede global commercial shipping via the key Bab el-Mandeb and Suez Canal routes, causing immense economic harm. According to the United Nations, the tanker carries four times the amount of oil spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident off the coast of Alaska, which was one of the world’s biggest ecological disasters.

The United Nations has been campaigning for years to secure cash for the $143 million salvage mission, which includes purchasing a new storage vessel to replace the ageing tanker, according to UNDP’s Steiner.

“It is an extraordinarily complex operation in which, first and foremost, diplomacy was critical, followed by the logistical ability to mount such an operation, and finally, being able to be on site with multiple vessels and put in place not only the conditions, but also the mitigation measures, contingency plans, and security plans,” Steiner said.

The finance was a significant hurdle for the United Nations, which turned to crowd sourcing to assist bridge the deficit. However, Steiner stated that the operation still need roughly $20 million to be completed. He chastised the oil and gas business for failing to contribute more.

“One can sometimes wonder, you know, is it really up to a school class of children in Maryland to contribute to our crowd funding?” he asked.

It will take five months to complete.

The replacement vessel, now known as the Yemen, arrived in Yemen earlier this month, and the salvage team was able to safely berth it alongside the Safer to begin the ship-to-ship transfer of oil amid unprecedented precautions, such as a small flotilla of technical and supply vessels, to avoid missteps during the operation.

“Many thought it would never happen,” the UNDP administrator told the Associated Press from New York, adding that the salvage effort may take up to five weeks to complete.

He stated that after transferring the oil, the replacement vessel would be attached to an undersea conduit that transports oil from the fields.

“I think we’ll start breathing easier when we see an empty Safer being towed away” to a scrapyard to be recycled, he says.