00:00 Now a UN vessel has arrived in the waters off Yemen for a highly sensitive operation
00:05 transferring crude oil currently stored on board a dilapidated tanker off the coast of
00:11 Hodeidah.
00:12 No maintenance operations have been carried out since 2015 due to that ongoing conflict
00:17 in the region.
00:18 The operation is considered complex, but the UN believes there's no other alternative to
00:23 prevent a massive oil spill.
00:26 To take us through this is our science editor Julia Seeger.
00:31 What exactly is the story?
00:33 So the dilapidated supertanker is called the Safer and it's been anchored 50km off the
00:37 coast of Hodeidah in Yemen since the 1980s and indeed there hasn't been any maintenance
00:43 operations since 2015 because of the conflict that opposes the Houthi movement supported
00:49 by Iran and the government forces that are supported and backed by a military coalition
00:54 led by Saudi Arabia.
00:55 And indeed for several years now this tanker has posed the threat of exploding at any moment
01:00 and it's carrying four times the amount of crude oil than did the vessel that was involved
01:05 in the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 which is still considered as one of the worst ecological
01:11 disasters in the world.
01:13 Now in the event of an oil spill it would of course have a consequence on the entire
01:17 region Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Somalia, Eritrea as well.
01:21 And the cost of cleaning alone, I'm not talking about the economic cost, but the cleaning
01:25 alone has been estimated to $20 billion by the UN.
01:28 So I'll let you just imagine the kind of economic damages this could trigger.
01:34 Now fearing an oil spill and because of the conflict the UN decided to take matters into
01:38 their own hands they raised money and they bought this ship called the Nautica which
01:41 has just docked next to the FSO Safer and they're now going to start pumping the oil
01:47 off the rusting ship which is also indeed a very difficult situation.
01:52 And why is it such a delicate operation?
01:54 Well because of the situation on the boat because it's so dilapidated but at the same
01:58 time because of extreme temperatures it's about 50 degrees Celsius in the Arabian Peninsula
02:03 in summer and that increases also the risks of slipping and tripping for the workers who
02:08 are also wearing these very heavy protective gear.
02:11 There's another problem Annette and that's marine mines because we are on a battlefield
02:16 here so here you see what a mine looks like.
02:19 It's actually a global problem but especially right now in Yemen.
02:23 I'm going to show you an explosion, there you go, an explosion of a marine mine.
02:29 So just imagine if there was such an explosion next to the tanker that is now filled with
02:33 over a billion barrels of petrol.
02:36 So what they had to do, the operation is going to last three weeks, it has already started,
02:41 they had to secure the entire boat so they looked at every valve, the mooring to make
02:46 sure that it hasn't changed.
02:48 The tank atmosphere is considered to be unsafe because of cargo vapor.
02:52 They had to inject inert gas into every one of the tanks to make the situation stable
03:01 on the boat and that's also to stop, to reduce the risk of explosion and fire.
03:07 Now with the arrival of the UN ship they're now going to start transferring the equivalent
03:11 of a billion barrels of oil and that's also going to be highly sensitive.
03:15 If everything goes well it will then be towed to a scrap yard.
03:18 And this of course all happening at extremely high temperatures too.
03:21 So what is going to happen to the recovered oil?
03:24 So that's a great question.
03:25 They're going to have to first evaluate the quality of the oil, if it has been contaminated
03:29 by seawater or other substances and the ownership of the oil is also a question because the
03:35 rivalry between the Houthis and the government is still ongoing even though the violence
03:41 on the ground has reduced considerably.
03:44 But the UN says that it first decided to negotiate this, preventing this massive spill and now
03:51 they're going to start, if everything goes well, they will have to negotiate on who's
03:55 going to take that oil and who's going to get the revenue from it.
03:59 Indeed, a difficult operation on so many levels.
04:01 Thank you so much Julia.
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