大象传媒

A UN super-tanker has arrived off the coast of war-torn Yemen to pump more than a million barrels of oil from a rusting, abandoned vessel that is in danger of breaking up.

Attempts have dragged on to inspect the 47-year-old FSO Safer, which has lain abandoned off the port of Hodeidah for eight years after civil war broke out in the country.

Long used as a floating oil storage platform 鈥� it is carrying four times as much oil as was spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska in 1989. The UN says a leak could mean a catastrophic environmental disaster.

David Gressly is the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen. He told Newsday: 鈥淚t鈥檚 an accident ready to happen and it鈥檚 good we got here at this point in time while the vessel is still intact enough for a fairly safe transfer of oil.鈥�

(Picture: Shows a UN staff member looking at the FSO Safer oil tanker moored in the Red Sea, off the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah on the 15th July 2023. Credit: Yahya Arhab / EPA.)