Last of oil removed from decaying tanker stranded off coast of war-torn Yemen

Aug. 11 (UPI) -- The offloading of oil from inside a decaying, 47-year-old crude oil tanker moored off the coast of Yemen was completed Friday to the praise of U.S. and international observers.

The United Nations announced in late July that work to transfer the estimated 1 million barrels of oil stuck on the supertanker FSO Safer was underway. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the vessel a "ticking time bomb" as the ship was at risk of deteriorating to the point that oil could spill in the Red Sea.

"The Safer was at risk of an oil spill four times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. " Such a spill would have cost tens of billions of dollars to clean up and been an environmental, economic, and humanitarian catastrophe for the region."

Yemen is a poor country plagued by years of civil conflict and a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The United Nations said the oil was transferred to the vessel MOST Yemen, supported by marine salvage company SMIT. SMIT was contracted by the U.N. Development Program for the operation.

There's more work to do, however. The United Nations said less than 2% of the original cargo was mixed in with sediment on the sea floor, but that will be removed during additional cleaning operations.

"Today is a proud moment for the many people across the U.N. system as well as our donors and partners who have worked tirelessly over the past months and years to avert a disaster in a country already vulnerable following protracted conflict," said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. "There is still work to be done, but today we can say with confidence that the immediate threat of a spill has been averted."

The United Nations estimated it would take 25 years for the fish stock to recover from a potential oil spill, while total coast for cleaning up the spill would reach $20 billion.