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Today, Sunday, Saudi Arabia pledged to provide ten million dollars to contribute to the financing efforts aimed at containing the existing threat from the abandoned oil tanker “Safer” dilapidated and docked off the coast of Yemen.
The King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center announced that the funding is a voluntary response and an emergency contribution to the urgent action aimed at preventing a possible oil leak from the tanker, amid warnings of a possible environmental disaster in the Red Sea in the event of a leak from the worn-out tanker.
According to reports, the “Safer” is a 45-year-old oil tanker that was left abandoned a few miles off the coast of the Yemeni city of Hodeidah, which is controlled by Houthi rebels in Yemen, and is anchored with more than a million barrels of oil on board.
The hull of the ship is now believed to be in poor condition, in danger and on the verge of disintegration.
The fear of the tanker is due to the fact that any explosion or leakage from it may cause one of the most dangerous oil spill disasters in history, according to a study conducted by Greenpeace Research Laboratories.
Last month, the United Nations held a conference to raise funds to help tackle the looming environmental crisis and prevent a potentially catastrophic oil spill, and estimated that the goal of moving 1.1 million barrels of oil from the Safer to another oil tanker would cost $80 million in total.
But what it has collected from donor countries so far is only a little more than a third of this amount.
The UN said the Safer contained four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, one of the world’s worst environmental disasters that polluted Alaskan waters.
It is reported that Yemen is witnessing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, due to a bloody internal conflict between Houthi rebels andto recognized authorities 8 years ago.
Saudi Arabia is leading a military coalition in Yemen in the midst of the war there in support of the government against the Houthis.