An environmental catastrophe has been averted in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen. The United Nations said on Friday it had completed pumping over a million barrels of oil from a ailing supertanker off the Yemeni coast. The UN and environmentalists have warned for years that the entire Red Sea coast would be at risk if the rusting tanker broke apart. Then four times as much oil would spill as in the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 off Alaska.
The tanker was used as a floating oil storage facility and has been anchored off the coast of Yemen for more than 30 years. Due to the war in Yemen, maintenance work was suspended in 2015. It took a salvage team 18 days to pump out the oil in midsummer temperatures and strong currents. In addition, the sea area around the tanker is mined.
The UN had spent more than $120 million on the preventive measure, said the head of the UN development program UNDP, Achim Steiner. A tanker was thus bought, which received the pumped-out oil. In addition, payments were made for planes that were supposed to drop chemicals in the event of an oil spill.
Relief from Washington to Berlin
Despite the stage victory, the UNDP urgently needs money for a clean scrapping of the tanker. Steiner sharply criticized the hitherto little generous oil and gas industry. “The fact that oil and gas companies, which have had a record year with profits in the billions, are unable to participate is embarrassing and difficult to understand,” he told the German Press Agency.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, welcomed the successful operation. A spokesman for the United Nations in New York also said on behalf of UN Secretary-General António Guterres: “This averted a potentially monumental catastrophe for the environment and people.”
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said: “The rescue operation off Yemen’s coast, led by the United Nations, has shown what is possible when the international community tackles it together.” With a good twelve million dollars, Germany is one of the largest donors to the campaign.