Yemen pressuring Houthis to keep Safer tanker ‘away from political conflict’

Yemen’s Minister of Transport Abd Al-Salam Hamid meets with officials from the UN Development Program in the interim capital, Aden. (Saba)

• Decaying oil tanker moored in the Red Sea has been abandoned since 2017 as an estimated 1.1m barrels of crude oil still remain onboard
• Yemen’s Minister of Transport says the situation no longer requires maintenance, but the tanker now needs to be permanently offloaded

LONDON: Yemen’s Minister of Transport Abd Al-Salam Hamid called on the UN to exert more pressure on the Houthis to keep a decaying oil tanker moored in the Red Sea “away from the existing political conflict” as its looming threat will affect “everyone without exception.”
The Safer tanker has been abandoned since 2017 as an estimated 1.1 million barrels of crude oil still remain onboard. 
Hamid’s comments came during a meeting on Tuesday in the interim capital, Aden, with Samia Al-Duaij, an environmental consultant and a representative of the UN Development Program, Salma Elhag, director of UNDP office in Aden and Mukallah, and Walid Baharoun, program specialist at UNDP Yemen.
They discussed the potentially catastrophic repercussions on the marine environment if the Safer tanker explodes, breaks up, or starts leaking. The rotting vessel holds four times the oil spilled during the Exxon Valdez incident in 1989 in the Gulf of Alaska.
A potential oil spill in the Red Sea would spread well beyond Yemen and cause environmental havoc affecting Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and other nearby countries.
According to The Guardian, the UN has been seeking Houthi permission to inspect the ship, but the Iran-backed rebels want undertakings that the vessel will also be repaired, an exercise that requires money the UN does not have available.
Hamid said the situation no longer requires maintenance, but the tanker now needs to be permanently offloaded.
He added that his ministry was ready to provide the required facilities so experts can deal with the tanker crisis in a way that contributes to containing its potential consequences.
Al-Duaij said the UNDP is very concerned about the floating tanker crisis and added that expert teams have held several meetings and discussions about solutions. They all agreed that the Safer should be offloaded.
She also said that the International Maritime Organization has implemented an urgent emergency plan in the case oil starts to leak from the tanker.