Preventing an Oil Disaster in Yemen

Yemen, which is in its ninth year of civil war, recently experienced a bit of good news. Since the war began in 2014, the 45-year-old supertanker Safer, a 1,150- foot vessel used as a floating storage and offloading facility, had been anchored along Yemen's Red Sea coast, north of the port of A...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Washington report on Middle East affairs 2024-01, Vol.43 (1), p.53-54
Main Author: Pasquini, Elaine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civil war
Diplomacy
Ports
Tankers
Truces & cease fires
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Yemen, which is in its ninth year of civil war, recently experienced a bit of good news. Since the war began in 2014, the 45-year-old supertanker Safer, a 1,150- foot vessel used as a floating storage and offloading facility, had been anchored along Yemen's Red Sea coast, north of the port of Al-Hudaydah. Deteriorating significantly due to lack of maintenance and upkeep, it posed the probability of exploding, sinking, leaking or breaking apart. The result would have been a major oil spill four times that of the Exxon Valdez in 1989. On Oct 24, United States Institute of Peace president and CEO Lise Grande and US special envoy to Yemen Timothy Lenderking discussed how innovative diplomacy--including dialogue between enemies, the work of multiple international stakeholders and tens of thousands of environmentalists who crowdsourced enough funds to pay for this operation--resolved the Safer dilemma.
ISSN:8755-4917
2163-2782