U.N. wants your help defusing "ticking time bomb" of decaying oil tanker
The United Nations has resorted to an online crowdfunding campaign to raise the money needed to avert what a senior U.S. official says would be a major "environmental, humanitarian and economic catastrophe." The U.N.'s lead coordinator for Yemen, David Gressly, launched an appeal for anyone and everyone to pitch in to start defusing what environmental activists call "a ticking time bomb" — a massive tanker full of crude oil slowly decaying off Yemen's coast.
The SFO Safer, a 45-year-old supertanker moored just off Yemen's Red Sea port city of Hodeida, is thought to be loaded with more than 1 million barrels of crude. For more than three years environmental activists and officials have warned the badly corroded ship could start leaking its cargo into the sea — or even explode — with devastating consequences for the ecology, people and economies across the region.
The Yemeni government has said that if the tanker ruptures, it could create an oil spill four times larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
The decaying ship was caught for years between the two sides that have torn Yemen apart in a vicious civil war. The vessel was often used as a bargaining chip in the crisis, which has pitted Yemen's internationally recognized, Saudi Arabian-backed government against a Iranian-backed uprising by ethnic Houthi muslims, who control a huge portion of the country
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/un-wants-your-help-defusing-ticking-time-bomb-of-decaying-oil-tanker/ar-AAYs8JK
