UN to ask donors for $80m to secure rusting Red Sea oil tanker

UN to ask donors for $80m to secure rusting Red Sea oil tanker

LONDON: The UN will try to remove over a million barrels of oil on a stranded supertanker off the coast of Yemen by raising $80 million from donors on Wednesday. The decaying ship, the 376-meter-long FSO Safer, is thought to have around 1.14 million barrels stored aboard in total, and has been left to rust for six years amid the Yemeni civil war, after it was converted into a floating storage facility. UN-backed engineers have been prevented from inspecting the 45-year-old ship by the Iran-backed Houthis, who currently control the capital, Sanaa, and who claim ownership of the ship and its cargo, using both as bargaining chips with the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen, which backs the internationally recognized government. Fears abound that, should the ship begin to leak, or be hit with munitions as a result of the war, it could cause an unprecedented environmental disaster in the Red Sea, with the damage ruining diverse marine ecosystems and affecting the livelihoods of as many as 200,000 local fishermen. The coasts of Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia could also be affected, and a spill would lead to significant disruption — and even the closure — of the Yemeni