How the UN Averted a MASSIVE Oil Spill in the Red Sea

A rare good news story from Yemen

FSO Safer. Image Credit: UNDP

I’ve been covering humanitarian crises, conflict and the United Nations since 2005. It is rare that this beat brings me a genuinely good news story. But today I have one of those stories for you—almost wrapped in a bow.

The background:

Yemen’s civil war escalated sharply in 2015. Houthi rebels captured large swaths of the country and an international coalition lead by Saudi Arabia hit back—sharply and often indiscriminately. For years, Yemen was the worst crisis in the world, regularly teetering on the edge of famine.

In the midst of the fighting, a creaky 47-year-old oil tanker off the coast of a hotly contested port city became stranded. The FSO Safer held a million barrels of oil. But it was decrepit, decaying and sometimes leaky. For the last eight years it sat in the Red Sea like a ticking time-bomb, threatening to unleash one of the worst oil spills in history. For comparison, the FSO Safer held about four times the amount of oil that the Exxon Valde…