Humanitarian Affairs Chief Mark Lowcock alerted the UN Security Council that an aging oil tanker moored outside Yemen’s Hodeidah port was at risk of exploding. The moored tanker was close to Yemen’s recently demilitarized Hodeidah port. During his speech, he highlighted that ‘The spill could reach from Bab el Mandeb to the Suez Canal, and potentially as far as the Strait of Hormuz.’
Specifically, Mr Lowcock highlighted that it is highly possible that the tanker could spill more than 1 million barrels of oil into the Red Sea.
As he specifically said
Last week, we also received initial written approval from Ansar Allah-affiliated authorities to proceed with a technical mission to assess the decaying Safer oil tanker, which is storing an estimated 1.1 million barrels of oil off the coast of Hudaydah.
Provided Ansar Allah-affiliated authorities continue to facilitate this work, the assessment team should be able to deploy to the tanker, called ‘Safer’ within the next two weeks.
Concerning the moored tanker, it was constructed in 1976 and has been moored north of Hodeidah since 1988 as a Floating Storage and Offloading (FSO) terminal. Following the Houthi rebels gaining control of Hodeidah in 2015, Safer has not been in use, but still holds approximately 1.1m barrels of oil. Its structure has been exposed to humidity and corrosion and it has had little maintenance.
Lowcock did not provide a timeframe on when a leak or explosion may happen, but experts said the risk of such a disaster increases as flammable gases build up.
