RIYADH: Saudi Arabia on Sunday pledged$ 10 million to help a geriatric Yemeni oil painting tanker from unleashing a potentially disastrous slip in the Red Sea skirting its waters.
The decaying 45- time-old oil painting tanker known as the FSO Safer, long used as a floating storehouse platform and now abandoned off the revolutionary- held Yemeni harborage of Hodeida, has not been serviced since Yemen was plunged into civil war.
A Saudi- led military coalition interposed in Yemen in 2015 after Houthi revolutionists seized the capital Sanaa the former time.
The tanker, which lies some 150 kilometers ( 100 long hauls) south of the border with Saudi Arabia, is in “ imminent ” peril of breaking up, the United Nations advised last month.
The Safer contains four times the quantum of oil painting that was revealed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, one of the world’s worst ecological catastrophes, according to the UN.
Last week environmental crusade group Greenpeace prompted the Arab League to tap up finances for an operation that would transfer its1.1 million barrels of oil painting to a different vessel.
A UN pledging conference last month fell far short of its$ 80 million targets, bringing in just $33 million.
Environmentalists advise the cost of the operation is a mite compared to the estimated $20 billion it would bring to clean up a slip.
The UN has said an oil painting slip could destroy ecosystems, shut down the fishing assiduity and close the lifeline Hodeida harborage for six months.
It has said the operation needs to be completed by the end of September to avoid “ turbulent winds ” that pick up latterly in the time.
Riyadh will contribute$ 10 million to the trouble through the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, the sanctioned Saudi Press Agency reported.
“ The Kingdom calls on the United Nations to snappily take the necessary measures to ensure the forestallment of oil painting leakage. and also calls on the transnational community to contribute urgently to support this action and help a serious environmental disaster, ” the agency said.
Saudi Arabia’s current defense spending is $36.8 billion per time, according to the Military Balance database prepared by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The war in Yemen has killed hundreds of thousands of people and left millions on the point of shortage. But fighting has reduced since April when an armistice went into effect, with the armistice presently due to last until August.
