WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- A potential oil spill from a decaying tanker moored off the coast of Yemen could disrupt food and water supplies for millions of people in the war-torn country, and cause an environmental and public health catastrophe that would be felt across the region, researchers have warned.
In a paper published in the Nature Sustainability journal, researchers from Stanford University, Harvard University, and UC Berkeley said an oil spill stemming from the FSO Safer tanker would impact the clean water supply of nine million people, and disrupt the food supply of between five and eight million people.
“The public health impacts of a spill from the oil tanker Safer are expected to be catastrophic, particularly for Yemen,” the study said.
The researchers called for urgent action to be taken in order to move the oil out of the tanker, adding that the “potentially disastrous impacts remain entirely preventable”.
Nearly 70 percent of humanitarian aid to Yemen enters through the ports of Hudaydah and Salif, which are near the stricken Safer, and more than half of Yemen’s population depends on humanitarian aid.
“The expected humanitarian impact of the spill is staggering,” Benjamin Huynh, one of the authors of the paper and a researcher at Stanford University, told Middle East Eye.
The Safer oil tanker was constructed in 1976 and has been anchored 60km north of Yemen’s port city of Hudaydah since 1988, acting as an FSO terminal to receive Yemeni export crude and load it onto vessels.
Safer has not been in use since the Yemeni army and its Ansarullah allies took control of Hudaydah in 2015, but it is estima and the breakdown of the crude inside, it has led to a growing risk of a chemical explosion.
The amount of oil in the tanker amounts to four times the amount of oil spilt in the world’s most environmentally damaging oil spill, the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
The area of the Red Sea that would be affected by an oil spill from the tanker is home to multiple Yemeni ports, as well as several desalination plants and fisheries that provide an income to millions of Yemenis.
In addition to the coastal damage, the researchers noted that there was a potential for air pollution to reach central and northern areas of Yemen, increasing the number of hospitalizations from cardiovascular issues to anywhere from 5.8 to 42 percent. It would also disrupt supplies in a country that imports nearly all its food and oil.
“With nearly 10 million losing access to clean water and seven million losing access to food supplies, we’d expect mass preventable deaths through starvation, dehydration, and water-borne illness,” said Huynh.
“This is further compounded by the expected fuel and medical supplies shortage, potentially inducing widespread hospital shutdowns. Finally, we expect air pollution to significantly increase the risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular and pulmonary outcomes.”
In the past, Yemen’s Ansarullah movement has held the Saudi-led coalition fully responsible for the possible oil leakage from the deserted decaying tanker.
“We have long been calling for the maintenance of the Safer tanker. Nevertheless, the U.S.-backed forces of aggression, besides their unjust blockade, have deliberately created obstacles and prevented any maintenance,” Ansarullah spokesman Muhammad Abdul-Salam has said.
Saudi Arabia imposed an air, land, and sea blockade in March 2015, cutting off all ports of entry and restricting the flow of food, fuel, medicine, and essential goods into the country. The blockade has also prevented commercial access to Yemen and delayed the arrival of humanitarian aidted to hold 1.1 million barrels of oil. Because of its age, a lack of maintenance,