On May 9, 2022, the International Maritime Organization issued a new warning that an "abandoned" tanker "FSO Safer", which is moored about 4.8 nautical miles (8.9 kilometers) off yemen's coastline, carrying more than 150,000 tons of crude oil, is about to disintegrate, and if it leaks, oil losses plus costs such as environmental impact and remediation will exceed $20 billion!
150,000 tons of oil: why is it "abandoned" and left unmanaged?
It is very innocent to say that this tanker is "abandoned", because the tanker's storage tank is loaded with more than 150,000 tons of crude oil, with a total value of more than 80 million US dollars, how can it be abandoned? In fact, it is this crude oil that makes it the object of contention between the Houthis in Yemen and the Yemeni government, and its history is simply a snot and a tear.
History of FSO SAFER
FSO SAFER was not originally a floating "cruise terminal", it was built for ExxonMobil by the Hitachi Shipyard in Japan, originally named "Esso Japan", flying the Liberian flag, and its parameters are definitely supertankers:
Length: 362 m
Width: 70 m
Gross tonnage: 192,679 tons
Deadweight tonnage: 406,640 tons
Esso Japan is powered by a steam turbine with a speed of 15.5 knots (28.7 km/h), and the other parameters are as follows:
Please note that its IMO number is: 7376472 Interested friends can go to the IMO according to this number to check it, just like the ID card number, which is unique.
Esso Japan can be said to be a super tanker, its super tonnage, length and size do not belong to the Panama class, but also makes it impossible to pass through any canal, can only be transported in port to port on the ocean, which makes it a high transportation cost, perhaps this also foreshadows its later fate.
Esso Japan was born at the very end of the first oil crisis, and it caught up with two oil crises in a row, one at the wrong time, and a few years later, the second in 1979, and by 1986, ESSO, which could not support its huge operating costs, had monopolized the ship and converted it into a non-propelled storage vessel.
Since then, Esso Japan has been transformed into FSO (Floating Storage and Unloading), and the ship name has been changed to SAFE, so the full name is now FSO SAFER, which is also named SAFE FSO Device.
FSO（Floating storage and offloading）
FSO is a class of FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offloading), which is a floating vessel used in the offshore oil and gas industry to produce and process hydrocarbons and store oil, generally moored near a drilling platform for direct storage or processing.
The FSO is only storage, does not have the processing capacity, most of them are single-hull tanker transformation, because the tanker itself has all the capabilities of loading and unloading, just to remove the power unit and other auxiliary devices for ocean voyages, the modification is convenient and good performance, so the early single-hull tankers were strictly prohibited from entering the port before a large number of tankers were transformed into FSO.
For example, the Seawise Giant, launched in 1979, is an astonishingly large ship, 488 meters long, with a full displacement of 600,000 tons, a draft of 24.6 meters, unable to sail on the Suez Canal or Panama Canal, or even through the English Channel, sunk in the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 (May 14, 1988), salvaged in 1988 and repaired in 1988 and continued into service until 2004, before being destroyed by First Olsen Tankers acquired and transformed into FSO and has been used as FSO in Qatar's Al Shaheen oil field.
FSO SAFER: A "victim" of Yemen's civil war?
In 1988, the Yemeni government took ownership and has been near the Yemeni coastline, in 1996 the Yemen Oil and Gas Company (YOGC) was established, FSO SAFER also transferred to the name of this company, but the mooring has not changed, you can find it on Google Maps, directly search for FSO SAFER:
It is less than 50 kilometers away from The famous tourist city of Hotai in Yemen, as shown in the following picture, in the blue bay of the blue sea:
The company has been using the FSO to store and export oil from the inland oil fields around Ma'rib, simply as a tanker terminal and depot.
Civil war breaks out: FSO SAFER becomes the focus of contention
Clashes between the Yemeni government led by President Abdullab Mansour Hadi and the Houthi armed forces led by former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2014 continue to this day.
Yemen's Houthi armed forces
On 19 March 2015, the Government of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, headed by the Houthi Movement, announced a general mobilization to overthrow Hadi and further control the southern provinces, and on 25 March, the Houthi Movement captured Lakhti and reached the outskirts of Aden, where Hadi's government was located, and Hadi went into exile.
Apparently FSO SAFER has fallen into the hands of the Houthis, when there were about 1.14 million barrels of crude oil in SAFE's storage tank, worth $80 million, and this high-value FSO has become the focus of negotiations between the two sides, but the situation of SAFER is getting worse because of old age and because of lack of maintenance.
Ahmed Kulaib served as a defender of SAFER until the Houthis seized control, a job he continued after the outbreak of Yemen's civil war in 2014, but he was angered by the country's corruption and chaos, and he left Yemen, which is why SAFER has never been professionally maintained since.
Safer's situation is becoming increasingly critical, the valves of the cooling system can no longer be opened, the ship's pipeline rust and structure is collapsing, the ship's fire extinguishing system has also failed, the power is only maintained by the small generator on the deck, and the SEPOC team can only ensure the maintenance of the SEPOC group lighting and heating, which is of no help to the maintenance of SAFE, and the rupture of the hull may occur at any time.
In early December 2019, Al Jazeera reported that SAFE's oil had leaked, and although subsequent satellite images showed that it was a false report, it still startled countries around the Red Sea, whose consequences for leaking 1.14 million barrels of crude oil into a narrow area of the Red Sea were unimaginable.
Simulation of the degree of surface oil slick caused by an oil spill
On July 15, 2020, the United Nations warned that FSO SAFER could be four times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill if it had leaked, after the Exxon Valdez crashed into Bryard Reef in Prince William Bay on March 24, 1989, and 257,000 barrels of crude oil spilled into Prince William Bay, the second largest oil spill in history, after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (Gulf of Mexico oil spill).
In the end, ExxonMobil spent $2 billion to clean up the oil, and the company paid the entire $507.5 million in damages, and another $1 billion to settle the related civil and criminal charges, but the environmental community believes that this is completely irreparable, and the real loss is far more than the $500 million paid by ExxonMobil.
On 25 February 2022, the UN-hosted FSO SAFER – Yemen Contingency Planning Workshop was held, with the participation of the International Maritime Organization and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Yemen, the first in Sana'a, Yemen, and the second in Aden, Yemen, in mid-March, but no executable decisions were reached.
U.N. Climate and Environment News Release April 8, 2022: U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Graceley said in New York on Friday that critical funding and timely action were needed to prevent a major oil spill from a rotting tanker moored off Yemen's coastline.
"If this happens, the spill will trigger a massive ecological and humanitarian catastrophe that will be concentrated in a country that has been devastated by more than seven years of war."
It will affect the livelihoods of more than 200,000 people, expose large numbers of people to life-threatening toxins, and major oil spills could at least temporarily close the ports of Hodeda and Salef, yemen's key ports for humanitarian aid, food, fuel and supplies.
It has a serious environmental impact on water, coral reefs and life-sustaining mangroves. Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia are also at risk. The cleanup alone would cost $20 billion
In addition, shipping in the strait is interrupted, because it is the choke point to the Suez Canal, which will affect global shipping.
The coordinated plan of the United Nations organization hopes to avoid this accident, its plan is to find a long-term alternative to the dilapidated tanker within 18 months, and within four months to carry out urgent operations to transfer oil to safe temporary ships, thus eliminating the threat, FSO SAFER will stay in place to be handled,
The cost of processing FSO SAFER will exceed $80 million, and the May pledging conference, currently co-hosted by the Netherlands, will be announced in the near future, and is currently seeking financial support from the Gulf states. Mr. Graceley hopes to complete the plan by September, as things will get more complicated when the monsoon begins in the second half of the year.
Further reading: Gulf of Mexico crude oil spill
On October 6, 2009, the Deepwater Horizon rig succeeded Transocean's semi-submersible rig Mariana and officially began operations at the Macondo Exploration Area, the Mississippi Canyon Block 252 (MC252) in the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Gulf of Mexico.
By April 20, 2010, the deepwater horizon work has been nearly half a year, the work is nearing completion, has been drilled to the rich oil and gas reservoir, currently only waiting for the well closure and evacuation work, but at 9:45 that night, no warning of the blowout occurred, the huge natural gas underground washed away the mud, mixed with seawater and oil and gas rushed to a height of 73 meters!
Just a minute after the leak, a huge explosion occurred, and 10 seconds later there was a second big explosion! The platform was apparently unable to be rescued, and after evacuating a large number of people, Deepwater Horizon was engulfed in raging fire, while the continuous flow of oil and gas under the well was like a torch, and 36 hours later there was another big explosion, and Deepwater Horizon sank.
The platform sank, and the disaster had just begun
On the afternoon of the 22nd, large pieces of floating oil began to appear near the sinking ground of the deep-water horizon, and the speed of oil spill reached 62,000 barrels per day, and the owner of the well, BP Petroleum, made every effort to try to close the well, but with little success! It was not until the beginning of August that the oil spill was effectively controlled.
A large amount of crude oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, and with the spread of the floating belt, thousands of square kilometers of sea areas have been polluted, because the large amount of crude oil coupled with the high winds and waves of the Gulf of Mexico, the floating belt on the sea surface can not be controlled!
According to satellite data, more than 180,000 square kilometers of sea area are polluted! And more crude oil has floated to the coastline of Louisiana and Mississippi, as early as may when the accident occurred, more than 320 kilometers of crude oil was found on the coastline, and as the warm and humid air flow in the Gulf of Mexico increased, a large amount of crude oil was washed onto the coastline at the turn of spring and summer in the southern United States!
Oil density is lower than water, will float on the surface of the sea, a large number of marine animals will be contaminated with oil, will block breathing, will also destroy hydrophobicity, resulting in repeated attempts to clean marine animals and exhaustion to die, seabirds will be because of a large amount of oil stains can not take off.
Toxic compounds such as benzene and toluene contained in oil leak into the ocean, and these toxic compounds also quickly enter the food chain, from low-level algae to higher mammals.
The easiest way to clean up crude oil is to burn it, but this method is only suitable for a large number of thick oil layers, which cannot be processed at all after diffusion, and can only circle the leaked crude oil, and then gather, pump it to the transport ship, and then process it after landing.
But either treatment is very costly, BP spent a total of $14 billion to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but the losses went far beyond that, with an estimated loss of more than $23 billion in fisheries and more than $34 billion in tourism! In September 2014, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that BP was primarily responsible for the oil spill, and in April 2016, BP paid a $20.8 billion fine settlement.
Reference:
https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/FSO-SAFER-oil-spill-risk.aspx
https://time.com/6048436/fso-safer-yemen-oil-tanker-disaster/