The Nautica, a supertanker purchased by the United Nations to collect the cargo of an abandoned oil tanker off the coast of war-torn Yemen, left China on Thursday, an “important step” in an operation to prevent an oil spill in the Red Sea, the UN announced, stressing the urgent need for funding.
In March, the UN announced that it had purchased a huge tanker to transfer the equivalent of just over one million barrels from the FSO Safer tanker anchored off the strategic port of Hodeida (western Yemen), which could break, explode or catch fire at any time, according to experts.
The Nautica, which was in dry dock in Zhoushan, China, “for regular maintenance and modifications”, left the port on Wednesday, said in a statement the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which is leading the operation. The ship, expected to arrive in the area in early May, is scheduled to make a stop en route for further technical modifications, a UN spokesman said. “The departure of the Nautica and its journey to the Red Sea is another important step in a complex operation to recover the oil from the Safer,” commented UNDP boss Achim Steiner, referring to a “culmination after months of preparation and coordination.”
“We are in a race against time and I call on governments, corporate CEOs and anyone in a position to do so to help us keep this operation on track as it approaches its critical stage,” he pleaded. The UN, which even launched a campaign of participatory financing (https://www.un.org/StopRedSeaSpill), does not have for the moment the necessary funds to ensure this operation whose budget exploded.
As of April 4, $95 million of the $129 million needed for the first phase of the rescue had been pledged. “We need the last of the funding this month to ensure success,” said David Gressly, UN coordinator for Yemen, saying that the departure of the Nautica “brings us closer to preventing a catastrophe.
About 45 years old, the FSO Safer, which serves as a floating storage and offloading terminal, has not been maintained since 2015 as Yemen is plunged into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises due to the war between the ruling government and Houthi rebels.
According to the UN, the Safer contains four times the amount of oil of the Exxon Valdez, the tanker that caused one of the biggest environmental disasters in the history of the United States in 1989.
