The current shipping crisis in the Red Sea, precipitated by Houthi drone and missile attacks, has stopped the final disposal of the decrepit FSO Safer, a floating oil storage and offloading vessel, moored in the Red Sea north of the Yemeni city of Al Hudaydah.

Fortunately, the over one million barrels of oil once stored in the ship, which would have been an ecological disaster if spilled, had been transferred to another tanker by the United Nations by August of 2023, only a few months before the outbreak of the current hostilities.

The final part of the clean-up — the removal of the 48-year-old decaying tanker to be scrapped has had to be put on hold due to the increased risk and resulting increased costs of operating in the region.      

For several years, the FSO Safer had been considered to be an environmental disaster waiting to happen. The ship had been held as a virtual hostage in the Yemeni civil war. A converted 400,000 DWT ultra-large crude carrier (ULCC), built in 1976, the ship contained about 1.14 million barrels of oil valued at up to US$80 million. The ship had been progressively deteriorating due to a lack of maintenance and supplies, and many were concerned that the Safer was at imminent risk of sinking, fire, or explosion.