On Wednesday, the UN will begin a $144 million plea for an operation to dump a million barrels of crude oil from tankers, which can cause a massive environmental disaster, says an article published in WHTC.
Donors conference
The UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, David Gressly, hope that a donors conference conducted in the Hague with the cooperation of the Netherlands would promptly mobilise funding to avert a disaster on the Red Sea coast and surrounding region.
He told Reuters the amount they were looking to raise was low “compared to the potential impact of a spill that would be catastrophic. It would cost $20 billion to clean it up.”
Turbulent winter seas
The Safer has been stranded off Yemen’s Ras Issa oil terminal since 2015, and U.N. officials have warned that it could leak four times as much oil as the Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska in 1989.
According to Gressly, the procedure should be completed by September, when rough winter waves increase the chance of a breakup.
The environmental impact of a spill would be severe because desalination plants would be shut down, cutting off a source of water for millions of people, according to the United Nations.
Resolve long term storage issue
The Houthis, who control the area where the tanker is anchored and the national oil company that owns it, inked a pact with the UN to deal with it in early March.
“The first step is to find a way to quickly move the oil into a temporary vessel until the long term storage issue is resolved. We’re not pursuing at this moment any attempt to sell the oil. It’s politically complicated to do that at this moment,” Gressly said.
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Source: WHTC
