---
title: "UN buys tanker to store oil from decaying vessel off Yemen"
description: "UNITED NATIONS, March 9 (Reuters) - The United Nations has purchased a large tanker to store about 1.1 million barrels of oil that will be transferred from a decaying vessel off Yemen's coast in a bid to avert an environmental disaster, officials said on Thursday."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "Safer supertanker"
author: "Reuters"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/reuters/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-03-10-un-buys-tanker-to-store-oil-from-decaying-vessel-off-yemen/"
published: "2023-03-10T04:26:22"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 426
---

# UN buys tanker to store oil from decaying vessel off Yemen

> UNITED NATIONS, March 9 (Reuters) - The United Nations has purchased a large tanker to store about 1.1 million barrels of oil that will be transferred from a decaying vessel off Yemen's coast in a bid to avert an environmental disaster, officials said on Thursday.

By Reuters · Published 10 March 2023, 06:26 SAST

## Key points
- The UN is struggling to raise the funds necessary to prevent a potential environmental disaster caused by a deteriorating tanker off the coast of war-torn Yemen and is calling for public donations, including a successful lemonade stand fundraiser by school children. The clean-up of any potential spill could cost up to $20 billion but the UN needs just $129 million to buy and remove the oil from the Safer tanker.
- UN officials have warned of a potential disaster in the Red Sea and Yemen coastline due to the Safer tanker.
- The UN is struggling to raise $129 million needed to remove oil from the tanker and pay for a vessel bought from Euronav.
- A public crowdfunding drive has been started, with students at an elementary school in Maryland raising $200 by selling lemonade.
- The UN has warned that the tanker's structural integrity has significantly deteriorated and is at risk of exploding.

## Content

UN officials have been warning for several years that the Red Sea and the coastline of Yemen was at risk as the Safer tanker could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.

But the top UN official in Yemen, David Gressly, said no-one had stepped up to donate a tanker and no company was willing to lease a vessel that would be used near a civil war "even though this situation has calmed down considerably."

The United Nations has said the clean-up of a spill could cost $20 billion, but yet it is struggling to raise the $129 million needed to remove the oil from the Safer and pay for the vessel bought from Euronav EUAV.BR for $55 million.

So far pledges of $95 million have been made, mostly by governments - of which $75 million has been paid. Even a public crowdfunding drive was started last year, which Gressly hopes can help provide more money to "finish the job."

Gressly, wanting to spur more public donations, praised students at an elementary school in Bethesda, Maryland, for raising $200 by selling lemonade.

EXPLOSION RISK

UN Development Programme Administrator Achim Steiner described the price of the tanker as "painful" amid a hot market driven by factors stemming from Russia's war in Ukraine, but Gressly said the world body had no other choice. A year ago it could have cost cost $10-15 million less, he said.

"We hope, if all things go according to plan, that the operation of the ship-to-ship transfer would actually commence in early May," Steiner told reporters.

The operation cannot be paid for by the sale of the oil because it is not clear yet who actually owns it, the UN . officials said.

The Safer supertanker was being used as a floating storage and offloading facility and is moored off Yemen's Red Sea oil terminal of Ras Issa. Production, offloading and maintenance operations were suspended in 2015 because of the war in Yemen.

The UN has warned that the tanker's structural integrity has significantly deteriorated and it is at risk of exploding.

"Work must now begin urgently. There is no time to delay," said Britain's UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward. Britain last year pledged some $7 million for the operation, she said.

Yemen has been mired in conflict since the Iran-allied Houthi group ousted the government from the capital Sanaa in 2014. A Saudi-led military coalition in 2015 intervened in a bid to restore the government.

By Michelle Nichols

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Grant McCool)