SANA’A (Al Jazeera) – The United States and the Netherlands have called for international action to address the “imminent threats” of a decrepit oil supertanker holding more than one million barrels of oil off the coast of Yemen.
The two countries issued a joint statement warning of the potential economic, environmental and humanitarian effects of an oil spill from FSO Safer, which they described as “decaying and unstable”.
“It could leak, spill, or explode at any time, severely disrupting shipping routes in the Persian Gulf region and other industries across the Red Sea region, unleashing an environmental disaster, and worsening the humanitarian crisis in Yemen,” the statement said.
The supertanker has been called a “ticking timebomb” by experts and environmental advocates.
Last month, the United Nations unveiled a plan to offload the oil from the supertanker to a temporary vessel across four months.
“Both the FSO Safer and the temporary vessel would remain in place until all the oil is transferred to the permanent replacement vessel,” the plan reads. “The FSO Safer would then be towed to a yard and sold for salvage.”
Last month, an Ansarullah official said the popular Yemeni resistance movement has inked an agreement with the United Nations to deal with the abandoned oil tanker threatening a major environmental disaster near the coast of the war-torn country.
Previously, Ansarullah demanded safeguards from the UN to be able to sell oil extracted from the aging vessel. However, illegal sanctions have made it impossible.
Independent studies have warned that an oil spill could destroy ecosystems in the Red Sea, shut down Yemen’s lifeline Hudaydah port and expose millions of people to high levels of pollution.