New York
Miracles sometimes require treasures of patience and perseverance. Off the coast of Yemen, which is in the grip of a bloody civil war, the threat of another scourge, that of a major environmental catastrophe, is slowly receding. The emptying of the tanks of the FSO Safer, a supertanker abandoned for eight years, and the transfer of its contents to a substitute tanker, the Nautica, began Saturday, July 25 under the gaze of dolphins and cormorants, nesting on the wreck. The operation, supervised by the UN, is a real technological and diplomatic tour de force.
Its ochre flanks battered by swells and eaten away by marine iodine, the Safer, a floating terminal for storing and unloading oil transported inland by the Ma'rib pipeline, was slowly disintegrating nine kilometers off the coast of Ras Issa (Yemen). The equivalent of 1.14 million barrels of crude stagnant in its tanks, a disaster was brewing in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, at the entrance...
This article is for subscribers only. You still have 91% to discover.
Want to read more?
Unblock all items immediately.
TEST FOR 0,99€
Already a subscriber? Log