The FSO Safer is now considerably safer. A United Nations operation to transfer more than one million barrels of oil from the decaying floating oil storage vessel into another ship off the coast of Yemen has been completed.  Removal of the oil began around July 14,  2023, and concluded on August 11, 2023.

The discharge of the oil from the decrepit vessel has been years in the making. In 2021, we posted that for several years, the FSO Safer, moored in the Red Sea north of the Yemeni city of Al Hudaydah, was a likely environmental disaster waiting to happen. 

The ship was being held as a virtual hostage in the ongoing Yemeni civil war. A converted 400,000 DWT ultra-large crude carrier (ULCC), built in 1976, the ship contained about 1.1 million barrels of oil valued at up to US$80 million. The ship had been progressively deteriorating due to a lack of maintenance and supplies, and many were concerned that the Safer was in imminent risk of sinking, fire, or explosion.

The UN said environmental disaster had been averted but it is unclear how the oil’s sale will be agreed between warring sides.

The BBC reports that work is now set to begin on the difficult task of decontaminating and scrapping the vessel but the fate of the recovered oil – which is majority owned by Yemeni state firm SEPOC – may prove even more complex to resolve.

There is no agreement on how profits from the oil’s sale will be shared among warring groups.
 
UN development program administrator Achim Steiner said: “The best end to the story will be when that oil actually is sold and leaves the region altogether.”

The oil from the Safer was transferred to the MOST Yemen (formerly known as the Nautica). Under the UN initiative, the marine salvage company SMIT, a subsidiary of Boskalis, was contracted to inspect and ready the FSO Safer and carry out a ship-to-ship transfer of the oil. 

FSO Safer Start of the Operation