World looks away as oil disaster looms off Yemen’s coast
Time is running out to prevent what Yemen envoy Tim Lenderking warns will be a "massive oil spill the likes of which the world has not seen."
Off the coast of Yemen lies an aging oil tanker that could rupture at any moment. Experts say it’s not a matter of if but when the FSO Safer leaks more than one million barrels of light crude oil into the sea — four times the amount spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989.
Environmental groups warn that one of the worst man-made environmental crises in history is imminent. But few governments are willing to open their wallets to prevent it.
“If we don’t act to prevent the breakup of the Safer, then there will be a massive oil spill the likes of which the world has not seen,” US special envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking told Al-Monitor in an interview. Lenderking likens the decades-old vessel to a ticking time bomb that could unleash “catastrophic consequences economically and environmentally.”
The Safer is anchored several nautical miles from Ras Isa port on the rebel-held western coast of Yemen, a country shattered by more than seven years of war between the Saudi-backed government and the Iran-aligned Houthis who control the vessel.
