UN prevents catastrophic oil spill in the Red Sea

Funding gap remains

Moored off Yemen’s Red Sea coast, the FSO Safer is a decaying supertanker that could have spilled more than a million barrels of oil into the Red Sea. The result would have been an environmental, humanitarian and economic catastrophe.

In August 2023, a UN-coordinated operation transferred the oil from the 47-year-old Safer to the safe replacement vessel Yemen (formerly Nautica). The oil transfer prevented the worst-case scenario: a catastrophic spill four times greater than the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

The Safer still poses a residual environmental threat, holding viscous oil residue that can only be removed during a final cleaning. That will take place during the second phase of the project, which comprises towing of the Safer for green recycling and installation of the Yemen to a specialized buoy.

As of mid-January 2024, generous donors, private companies, and members of the public had contributed $129 million and pledged an additional $4 million of the $144 million that was needed to implement the emergency phase of the project.

The United Nations is extremely grateful to members of the public that donated more than $300,000 to the Safer Project, helping to make the successful emergency phase of the project possible.

At present, the United Nations is not asking the public for funding.