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The "FSO Safer" has not been serviced since 2015 (picture from 2020)
Photo: Maxar Technologies / AFP
Saudi Arabia has pledged $10 million to stop oil spilling from an abandoned oil tanker off the coast of Yemen.
The Saudi government wants to provide the money through the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, according to a report by the Saudi state news agency on Sunday.
The 45-year-old ship "FSO Safer" has long been used as a floating oil reserve with 1.1 million barrels of crude oil on board.
Since 2015, it has been anchored off Yemen's rebel-held port of Hodeida without being serviced.
The "FSO Safer" is located around 150 kilometers south of the border with Saudi Arabia.
The United Nations warned in May that the ship was in "imminent danger" of leaking.
The amount of oil in the tanker is four times what got into the sea from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
At that time, an oil spill was triggered, which is still considered one of the most devastating environmental disasters in history.
In the event of an oil spill, the port would have to be closed for six months
According to an estimate by the US coordinator for humanitarian aid in Yemen, David Gressly, pumping the oil from the "FSO Safer" to another ship and securing it there would require $144 million.
According to environmentalists, cleaning up an oil spill would be many times more expensive at $20 billion.
According to the UN, this would destroy ecosystems, deprive fisheries of their basis and the important port of Hodeida would have to be closed for six months.
According to this, the oil would have to be loaded by the end of September, since strong winds will pick up in the stretch of sea later in the year.
Yemen has been at war since 2015 between Arab-backed government forces and Iran-backed Shia Houthi rebels.
The rebels occupied the Yemeni capital Sanaa in 2014 and now control most of northern Yemen.
According to the UN, around 380,000 people have already died as a result of the conflict, most of them from hunger, disease and a lack of drinking water.
Millions more people had to flee.
The UN considers the crisis in Yemen to be the largest humanitarian catastrophe in the world.
ani/AFP
