FSO Safer supertanker [4] | Stock Arena

The FSO Safer supertanker is holding four times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez – enough to make it the 5th largest oil spill from a tanker in history.

The United Nations has secured insurance cover to start a ship-to-ship transfer of 1.1 million barrels of crude oil from a rusting tanker moored off the coast of war-torn Yemen — oil that could cause a major environmental disaster.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) described the insurance as “a pivotal milestone” in a years-long effort to remove the cargo of the FSO Safer, which is at risk of rupture or exploding.

The UNDP has been trying to start a salvage operation to avert what it says could amount to “one of the world’s largest, man-made disasters in history.”

It secured tens of millions of dollars in pledges for the operation, which started late in May with experts pumping inert gas to remove atmospheric oxygen from the oil chambers of the vessel.

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The decaying supertanker is an environmental & humanitarian threat