World·In Depth
A 'time bomb' in the Red Sea could cause a catastrophic oil spill without global help: UN
To remove the oil from the decaying Yemeni oil tanker will cost $144M US, but Canada won't contribute
For three years, Mohammed Al-Hakimi has issued warnings of a looming catastrophe off his country's western coast: a decaying tanker that threatens to spill more than a million barrels of crude oil into the Red Sea.
The ship, known as the FSO Safer, has the potential to become one of the worst environmental disasters of all time, as it carries more than four times the oil that was on board the Exxon Valdez when it ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1989.
International authorities warn the ship could disintegrate or explode at any time — a disaster that would have far-reaching effects for the countries and marine life along the Red Sea, and to global supply chains that rely on crossing those waters.
"It's going to be a world catastrophe in a way," Al-Hakimi, the founder of Yemeni environmental group Holm Akhdar, said in an interview from the country's largest city, Sana'a.
On Wednesday, the United Nations will hold a conference in the Netherlands, where it will ask countries — including Canada — to contribute to $144-million US needed for an emergency operation to remove the oil from a ship it describes as a "time bomb."
That figure is a fraction of the estimated $20 billion US the UN said it would cost to clean up an oil spill from the Safer.
The UN's plea was echoed by the Embassy of the Republic of Yemen in Ottawa, which said in a statement to CBC News: "It is important that the world recognizes the gravity of this situation and must act together immediately … before it touches us all. It is critical that we act with the advantage of foresight rather than react in the chaos of hindsight."
But Canada has no plans to be among the countries contributing to the salvage mission, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada told CBC News ahead of Wednesday's pledging event.
"Canada is not in a position to provide funding to support the salvage of the FSO Safer at this time."
A disaster waiting to happen
Since 1988, the Safer — a floating oil storage and offloading vessel owned by Yemen's state oil company — has been used to store, transfer and export crude from the country's oil fields.
But after war broke out in 2015 between Yemen's internationally recognized government and Houthi rebels, the waters north of Hodeida became contested, and the Safer fell into disrepair.
"This vessel could break up tomorrow. Every day that we wait is a gamble," David Gressly, the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator for Yemen, told CBC News.
"An explosion risk has become very real now, and it's actually just a matter of time. It will fall apart — the only question is when."
After convincing the two warring sides to allow experts to access the stricken ship, the UN now has a plan to remove the oil, though few of the specifics have been made public ahead of the Wednesday's conference.
How a salvage operation could work
Gressly confirmed that the operation's first few months will be spent preparing the precarious vessel for offloading the oil safely, a process the UN hopes will begin within weeks.
"It's a lot of work required, because it's in such bad condition and very dangerous."
The salvors — those involved in the salvage effort — will need to assess the structural integrity of the ship and its systems, crew safety, and the potential environmental impacts of the mission, said Nadeem Anwar, a marine salvage expert and senior lecturer at the Warsash Maritime School at Solent University in Southampton, England.
The greatest concern will be the risk of an explosion when the ship's oil tanks are opened, because any hydrogen in the tanks, mixed with rust or corrosion, could ignite once fresh air rushes in, Anwar said.
"It can lead to an explosion very, very rapidly, which means the entire operation can be jeopardized within a matter of minutes."
The salvage crew will need to consider whether to pump inert gases into those chambers in order to keep their contents stable.
"Without inert gases, the operation gets that much more risky," Anwar said.
Once the ship is deemed safe, the UN said the oil will be offloaded to a temporary vessel and stay there until a more permanent solution is found, such as another floating storage vessel or something onshore.
It's unclear whether pumps and valves on board the Safer can be used for offloading the oil, given they haven't been maintained for seven years, so the salvors may need to use portable equipment, Anwar said. The salvors will also have to maintain the ship's ballast throughout the transfer by pumping seawater into the ship while draining the oil.
The UN said the transfer operation needs to be finished by the end of September. That's when strong winds typically pick up in the Red Sea, which creates the risk of further damage to the Safer — or even a collision between it and the offloading vessel.
While the salvage mission takes place, the UN will look for a more permanent storage facility to hold the oil "until the conflict [between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels] is basically over, and a peace settlement is in place where we can actually sell the oil and get rid of the problem once and for all," Gressly said.
While groups on the ground in Yemen are relieved that a salvage plan could soon be put in motion, they are worried that more has not been done to prepare people living on the coast for the potential of a spill or explosion before, or during, the operation.
Al-Hakimi said his organization has set up a hotline people can call if they see oil in the water and has begun training farmers and others on how to respond, but he said the UN should have spearheaded that work long ago.
'A global catastrophe'
The environmental consequences of a spill would stretch far beyond Yemen's borders, devastating coral reefs, a turtle nesting site and other marine life in the Red Sea, a Greenpeace spokesperson said.
"It's a unique area with unique marine life and … biodiversity, including marine mammals, dugongs, mangroves, whales and dolphins, too," said Paul Horsman, who is leading the Greenpeace team responding to the FSO Safer.
Yemen's already dire humanitarian situation would also be made significantly worse by an environmental disaster, according to modelling carried out by ACAPS, a non-profit organization that provides independent humanitarian analysis to UN agencies, governments and other groups.
More than 20 million Yemenis — about 70 percent of the country's population — rely on billions of dollars in international aid, most of which flows into the country via the western port of Hodeida. If an oil spill occurs, that critical gateway would likely close for two to three months.
A spill would also disrupt drinking water for up to 10 million people, limit fuel supplies for electricity, transportation and health care, as well as cause hundreds of thousands of farmers, fishermen and others to lose their livelihoods, the ACAPS modelling found.
Likewise, an explosion or fire would cause major air pollution over an even greater area of western Yemen, posing a "significant health risk" to vulnerable people in a country where most residents have no access to basic medical services.
"[Either scenario] could only exacerbate the situation of the Yemeni people further, and it's something that can definitely be avoided, given enough response to this potential environmental disaster," said Steve Penson, a data scientist at ACAPS.
"We know the economic impacts, the social impacts, health impacts — it's been warned about, and I think there's a potential here to really help avoid something like this from occurring."
Potential disruption to the Suez Canal
The economic impacts would also stretch well beyond Yemen and its neighbours: the UN warns an oil spill could disrupt billions of dollars in global shipping through a key passageway to the Suez Canal.
"Think of the Ever Given," Gressly told journalists in New York earlier this month, referring to the massive container ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal last March, blocking hundreds of ships from passing through.
That's just one of the reasons why Al-Hakimi, the local environmental activist, said the world should care about preventing the Safer from causing its own disaster.
"There's two choices: either a global movement and a global support for this, or … we wait for catastrophe and we wait for the oil spill," he said. "And then, we can't fix what's broken."
