An Oil Rig off Yemen’s Coast Could Lead To One of the Worst Oil Spills of All Time
The FSO Safer, a dilapidated oil tanker-turned oil storage vessel, is in imminent danger of spilling its cargo.
A potential disaster could cost billions of dollars in cleanup and impact both people and the natural ecosystem.
The United Nations is trying to organize a mission to transfer the oil to a safe vessel amid a dangerous conflict in Yemen.
An oily time bomb floats off the west coast of Yemen. The FSO Safer, a derelict oil tanker, is in grave danger of disintegrating and releasing its 1.14 million barrels of crude oil into the Red Sea. The aging tanker has held oil for the past 30 years.
International authorities including the United Nations (UN) warn that the ship is ready to leak, fall apart, or even explode. Located just 4.8 nautical miles off the Yemeni coast, the spill would be a world catastrophe with lasting environmental consequences, Mohammed Al-Hakimi, the founder of Yemeni environmental group Holm Akhdar, tells CBC News. The ship holds four times the amount of oil the Exxon Valdez spilled in 1989 in one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history (see sidebar).
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This tanker spill would cost $20 billion in cleanup, according to the UN, and it would greatly harm the local ecosystem. The damage would also impact global supply chains and impede travel along the Red Sea. Spreading oil would shut down fisheries and impact shipping. Water treatment plants and power plants could be affected.
Now, the UN is attempting to raise money for an emergency operation to move the oil to a different ship, but so far it has raised only $40 million, about half of the funds it needs. The months-long operation must begin within weeks to avoid high winds and strong currents expected in September, according to the UN, or else the tanker will face imminent risk of destruction.
Once a mission does get underway, a salvaging team would pump inert gasses (they won’t react detrimentally with the oil) into the oil chambers on the ship in order to keep their contents stable, according to the CBC News story.
Once they’re deemed safe, the team would open the oil tank lids and insert hydraulic pumps inside to remove the oil to a temporary vessel moored in the Red Sea. The UN hopes to find a permanent storage facility where the oil can be stored until the conflict subsides. Meanwhile, the empty tanks would be cleaned of any remaining oil, and the ship would be sold for scrap.
There’s Only One Feasible Solution to a Leak
Michel Boufadel—a civil and environmental engineer who has provided cleanup solutions during major American oil spills such as Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon—tells Popular Mechanics that the best possible solution is to retrieve the oil for alternate, safe storage. Since that scenario may not succeed, the next best option if a leak occurs is to simply spray dispersants on it by airplane. Dispersants would break up the oil slick on the surface of the water like dishwashing detergent breaks up oil from dirty dishes. Dispersant gets between the water and the ultra-thin layer of oil. Within days, the oil does disappear beneath the water, where certain microorganisms, like an oil-loving bacteria, eventually consume it.
“If this tanker spills, there’s not much time for people to get there and take action, especially considering the hostilities in that region,” says Boufadel, who is the director of the Center for Natural Resources at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey. Even if crews could collect the oil in a cleanup operation, there’s likely no safe place to take it in the war-torn region, he adds. It’s important to focus cleanup efforts in shallower areas of the sea, where a greater density of life tends to thrive.
Similar to Exxon Valdez, the oil is of a light variety, so 40 to 50 percent of it will probably evaporate in the hot Yemeni climate and cause some temporary episodic air pollution, Boufadel says. The other half, unfortunately, will probably expand widely. “It will spread across 200 miles of shoreline easily and affect sea life. On the water surface it’s very thin, like 100 microns (thickness of human hair), but it could go down to 1 micron, which means it will cover large areas. That’s a big problem. Once it deposits there, it will impact the ecology, because it becomes more viscous and sticky.” Organisms living in affected areas, like sea turtles, corals, and many species of birds, could feel the impact for ten to 15 years, he says.
A Brief History of FSO Safer
Built in 1976, the FSO Safer is one of the largest oil tankers in the world at 1,230 feet long. It was converted into a floating storage and offloading facility in 1986 and has been anchored off the coast of Yemen for 30 years. Care of the ship, including maintenance work, halted in 2015 after war broke out between a pro-Government Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels in Yemen. Now, the ship is beyond repair.
The still-raging civil war has killed more than 300,000 people, according to the UN. This dangerous situation makes it extremely difficult to address worsening conditions on the oil tanker. Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, talked to the UN in a June 2021 briefing about the impending disaster. She said that “political and logistical obstacles” were preventing a planned assessment of the situation. “As a result, we still do not know the exact condition of the vessel, nor what the best solution would be to deal with 1.1 million barrels of oil in an aging tanker located in an environmentally sensitive area of the Red Sea,” she said during the briefing.
Since then, the risk of a spill has only grown, and international agencies are painting a dire picture of the future in this region. A spill could affect up to 670,000 livelihoods, Andersen said during the briefing. Marine life in the Red Sea far beyond the disaster site would suffer as well, according to Greenpeace. The oil would impact coral reefs, a turtle nesting site, and many species of marine life, including dolphins and whales who roam this sea.
🛢 Some of the Worst Oil Spills in History
Prestige, 2002
The oil tanker MV Prestige sank in November during a storm about 130 miles from the coast of Galicia. Oil polluted thousands of miles of coastline and harmed the local fishing industry. The toxicity is considered higher than the spill from the Exxon Valdez.
Deepwater Horizon, 2010
When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico, the result was the largest marine oil spill in history, with 134 million gallons of oil spreading through the Gulf. Up to 800,000 birds may have died as a result of the spill. The rig sank 41 miles off the coast of Louisiana. BP oil company was held responsible.
The Persian Gulf War Oil Spill, 1991
During the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait to acquire that nation’s oil reserves, Iraqi forces threw hundreds of millions of gallons of oil from Kuwait’s Sea Island terminal into the northern Persian Gulf. The deliberate war tactic resulted in a great lost of biodiversity along the coasts in the region and on marine life.
Exxon Valdez, 1989
A massive oil spill in the Prince William Sound in the Gulf of Alaska experienced delayed cleanup operations. The Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef and spilled 11 million gallons that spread 1,300 miles along the shoreline and adjacent waters.
Amoco Cadiz, 1978
A crude oil carrier with nearly 69 million gallons of light crude oil, the Amoco Cadiz ran aground on shallow rocks off the coast of Brittany, France, on March 16. A large wave is considered responsible for damaging the carrier’s rudder and hydraulic system. Millions of invertebrates and about 20,000 birds died, and oil contaminated oyster beds along 200 miles of French coast.
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