The arrival of the ship in charge of unloading Safer to Hodeidah

Yesterday, Yemeni Foreign Minister Ahmed bin Mubarak announced the arrival of the replacement ship (Nautica) to the port of Hodeidah, in preparation for unloading more than one million barrels of crude oil from the port. dilapidated tank (whistled).

Bin Mubarak said on Twitter that the ship’s arrival came “after years of the Houthi militia’s intransigence and its rejection of the least expensive solutions to the Safer reservoir, and thanks to the efforts of the Yemeni government and the donations of international partners.”

He pointed out that the Yemeni government “carried from an early age this file at the top of its priorities, out of keenness to avoid the largest potential environmental disaster in the Red Sea, for which the Yemenis would have paid the biggest price for years to come.”

The United Nations Resident Coordinator in Yemen, David Gracey, announced last Saturday that the ship (Nautica) sailed from Djibouti on its way to the Yemeni coast on the Red Sea to withdraw oil from the Safer reservoir.

1.1 million barrels of oil

Last month, the United Nations Development Program announced the provision of insurance coverage for the Safer tank unloading operation, and said that the total cost of the operation was estimated at $142 million.

It is noteworthy that the “Safer”, which was manufactured 47 years ago and is used as a floating storage platform, is loaded with about 1.1 million barrels of crude oil, and the ship has not undergone any maintenance since 2015, which led to the erosion of its structure and the deterioration of its condition.

SMIT Salvage will pump the oil from the Safer to the Nautica, which the United Nations purchased specifically for this operation, before towing the empty tanker in an operation estimated to cost $148 million.