UN funding drive to prevent Yemen oil spill set for May 4

Seeking to avoid a damaging oil spill in the Red Sea, the UN Development Program (UNDP) in March took the unprecedented step of purchasing its own supertanker to remove more than a million barrels of oil from the beleaguered FSO Safer.

The 47-year-old ship has not been serviced since Yemen's devastating civil war broke out in 2015 and was left abandoned off the rebel-held port of Hodeida, a critical gateway for shipments into the country heavily dependent on emergency foreign aid.

Nautica, the supertanker purchased by the UNDP, is currently en route to the region and should first make a stop in Djibouti in early May.

The entire operation is estimated to cost $148 million, but prior funding drives have come up short.

"We urgently need to close the $29 million funding gap for the emergency operation and raise the additional funds needed to ensure safe long-term storage of the oil," said David Gressly, UN coordinator for Yemen, in a statement.

The UK and the Netherlands are organizing the May 4 virtual conference, which has an "aim of fully funding both phases of the Safer project" according to a UN statement on Thursday.

The first recovery phase will cost $129 million, of which only $99.6 million has been pledged, the UN said. It estimates the second phase will cost a further $19 million.

"An enormous oil disaster is looming, which could have serious humanitarian, environmental and economic implications. But we now have a chance to prevent that disaster," said Dutch trade and development minister Liesje Schreinemacher.

The UNDP also announced on Thursday that it had finalized a contract with SMIT Salvage, a subsidiary of the Dutch company Boskalis, to transfer the oil from the Safer to the Nautica and to prepare the tanker for towing once it has been emptied.

A SMIT vessel was due to leave on Thursday for the Red Sea loaded with "generators, hydraulic pumps and other specialized equipment to carry out the operation on the Safer, which no longer has functioning systems," the UNDP said. The start of operations is expected sometime in May.

The Safer's 1.1 million barrels of oil is four times as much as that spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, one of the world's worst ecological catastrophes, according to the UN.