The title of this article refers to a “race,” but this problem began eight years ago. Because of its location and the cost to prevent an oil spill from the stranded freighter, everyone involved simply closed their eyes and ignored the necessity for action. Now it’s an emergency and the proposed solutions may be arriving too late to prevent environmental disaster.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-race-to-avert-an-oil-spill-that-could-cost-20-billion-to-fix-85a884ea? [click thru for remainder of article including maps]

The Race to Avert an Oil Spill That Could Cost $20 Billion to Fix

Salvage team aims to siphon more than a million barrels of oil from the decaying hulk of the FSO Safer before it breaks apart

By Sune Engel Rasmussen and Saleh al-Batati

Updated July 23, 2023 4:05 pm ETSAVESHARETEXT

For years, as Yemen was ravaged by civil war, another catastrophe has loomed off the country’s Red Sea coast, where a rusting tanker is threatening to break apart and spill more than a million barrels of oil into the fragile ecosystem.

International organizations and experts watched with alarm as the FSO Safer—left stranded 5 miles off the Yemeni shore since 2015—began to fall apart. If it ruptures or explodes, it could disgorge four times the amount of oil spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, disrupting one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and closing off ports bringing humanitarian aid into the war-torn country. A cleanup would cost more than $20 billion, and would never be fully complete, the United Nations estimated. 

Early this week, a U.N.-led team of international experts is scheduled to begin an audacious operation to siphon out the entirety of the Safer’s volatile cargo. 

The plan is fraught with danger. It involves lining up a very large crude carrier, purchased by the U.N. as the Nautica and now renamed Yemen, alongside the FSO Safer. The tanks on the two vessels will be connected by pipes and the oil will be shifted using hydraulic pumps. The Safer will then be cleaned of sludge, constituting an estimated 5% of the original cargo, and towed away to eventually be sold for scrap. The salvage vessel containing the oil will be taken to a nearby location and secured to a specially strengthened buoy anchored to the seabed with thick cables.