SANAA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- A crude tanker chartered by the UN has departed from the Chinese port city Zhoushan to assist in unloading crude oil from a floating supertanker off the coast of Yemen, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said in a statement on Thursday.
The vessel "Nautica," which is expected to arrive in Yemen in early May, was purchased by the UNDP from Belgian shipping company Euronav in March to remove over a million barrels of oil from the deteriorating Floating Storage and Offloading (FSO) "Safer" vessel.
An employee of Euronav confirmed to Xinhua that Nautica left the drydock in Zhoushan on Wednesday after receiving maintenance and necessary modifications over the past weeks.
The FSO Safer, anchored off the coast of Yemen's Red Sea port of Hodeidah, has not been maintained since 2015 due to the conflict in Yemen.
The decaying and dilapidated supertanker has been referred to as a "floating time-bomb" that poses a risk of explosion or oil spill, potentially four times as disastrous as the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident in the Red Sea, according to the UN's repeated warnings.
The UNDP statement warned that a major spill would devastate fishing communities along Yemen's Red Sea coast, resulting in the loss of 200,000 livelihoods overnight, with fish stocks taking 25 years to recover.
It would also lead to the closure of the essential ports of Hodeidah and Saleef, which are crucial for bringing food, fuel, and life-saving supplies into Yemen where 17 million people are in need of food assistance, as stated by the UNDP.
"The departure of the Nautica, and its onward journey to the Red Sea, is a significant next step in the complex operation to take on the oil from the Safer," quoted UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner in the statement.
The UN said it had received firm commitments for 95 million dollars for the FSO Safer rescue plan, adding it still needs another 34 million dollars to continue the project. ■
