UN warns of Red Sea oil spill disaster

According to CNN, the FSO Safer, built in 1976, has been stranded off the coast of Yemen since 2015 after Houthi forces took control of the area. The ship has now been severely degraded after a long period of lack of maintenance and is at risk of sinking or exploding at any time. Because the FSO Safer contains 1.14 million barrels of crude oil, UN officials and experts estimate that if the ship sinks, the amount of oil spilled into the sea would be four times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster off the coast of Alaska (USA) in 1989. Many people have also warned that the oil spill from the FSO Safer could force food supply ports to close, seriously affecting millions of Yemenis and causing major disruptions to maritime trade in the Red Sea.

In order to rescue the FSO Safer, the UN launched a campaign to mobilize funding last year and has so far purchased the “super tanker Nautica” to transfer more than 1 million barrels of oil from the FSO Safer. According to Reuters, the UN needs $129 million to handle the oil on the FSO Safer, but has so far raised only about $99 million from governments and international donors. Mr. Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesperson of the UN Secretary-General, said that through the online conference of donors organized by the UK and the Netherlands on May 4, the UN hoped to get the remaining amount, but in the end only raised an additional $5.6 million.

The UN Secretary-General’s deputy spokesman stressed that the urgent task now was to secure funding for the successful rescue of the FSO Safer. However, Mr. Haq affirmed that despite the lack of funding, the UN believed that surface operations would begin by the end of May, pending further funding.

Recently, private oil company Hayel Saeed Anam Group (HSA) also called on the global business community, especially those operating in the oil sector, to show responsibility by contributing the remaining $29 million to prevent the oil spill disaster from the FSO Safer. The company's leaders warned that the oil spill would affect communities across the entire Red Sea region, which has long been heavily dependent on economic and commercial activities.

Similarly, a UN official also expressed concern that the FSO Safer could sink or explode at any time, causing serious environmental devastation. "We don't want the Red Sea to become the Black Sea. That's what will happen," the UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, David Gressly, told Sky News.

Mr. Gressly warned that an oil spill from the FSO Safer would severely impact food aid for 6 million people in Yemen and halt imports of fuel needed to provide fresh water to 8 million people. He stressed that the $129 million needed to rescue the FSO Safer was a small sum compared to the $20 billion cost of cleaning up the oil spill in the event of a catastrophic oil spill.

ANH VU

Source: https://www.qdnd.vn/quoc-te/doi-song/lien-hop-quoc-canh-bao-ve-tham-hoa-tran-dau-tren-bien-do-727177