13 ms·

Decaying Tanker Has 4 Times the Amount of Oil as the Exxon Valdez

188 points by samizdis 6y ago

tomohawk 6y ago
Houthis (backed by Iran) control it. Good luck.
- wffurr 6y ago
  FTA: "The New York Times reported on November 24 that the Houthis will grant permission to a United Nations (UN) team to board the Safer to inspect and repair the vessel in the near future."
  - nradov 6y ago
    So the inspection hasn't actually been granted. And while the ship is floating in the open sea loaded with flammable cargo it's nearly impossible to conduct the sort of structural repairs that would be necessary to stop the oil spills.
- djohnston 6y ago
  From the article it seems like they're allowing a UN team to come in and investigate/repair, and I hope they'll be allowed to do what is necessary. This would be a good moment for the UN to demonstrate its value when it is often criticised as ineffective.
- unstatusthequo 6y ago
  I’d love to see some “vigilante tanker” come drill into it and heist the oil out to eliminate the threat. Environmental terrorism is what is occurring here. Houthis should be treated as such. This is why Iran can’t have nice things.
  - ada1981 6y ago
    Sounds like Trump may be right that this is a terrorist group. Clean up your mess or you are the mess that needs cleaned up.
samizdis 6y ago
Article in Frontiers in Marine Science cited in the SciTechDaily piece. "A Closing Window of Opportunity to Save a Unique Marine Ecosystem" https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.615733/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.6157...
GreeniFi 6y ago
It’s interesting that the article does not attribute responsibility. Ultimately, that tanker was under the control of a group of decision-makers and liability should be attributed. I say this, because what pollution is in economic terms is the movement of cost from one person’s balance sheet to another’s - whether by hook or by crook. We do ourselves a disfavour when we don’t identify how liability moves.
- samizdis 6y ago
  According to an article in the current edition of Private Eye (a UK magazine): The Safer has sat off our [Yemen] coast, abandoned and rapidly decaying, for the last five years. Our government-in-exile ... claims ownership of the vessel."
  - GreeniFi 6y ago
    Private Eye is one of the few publications which identifies this type of detail. I’m a regular buyer. Thanks for sharing.
    - samizdis 6y ago
      I'll add some more from the article, then, repeating the initial quote in full and then carrying on. The Safer has sat off our coast, abandoned and rapidly decaying, for the last five years. Our official government-in-exile, led by the useless President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, claims ownership of the vessel but is squabbling with the Houthis over who gets its load of rapidly degrading crude, estimated to be worth $30m. To make matters worse, Donald Trump is thinking of officially declaring the Houthis as terrorists, just as they were on the verge of allowing UN access to the ship. (This was from PE No. 1537, cover date 18 December 2020.)
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  My impression is that the decision makers have become very good at creating ambiguity for this exact purpose, there is even a wiki article for 'diffusion of responsibility" For instance McLaren company has a couple thousand kegal entities sprincled around the world, and its is a relatively recent phenomena
chx 6y ago
This is where an international navy staffed by blue helmets comes in and grabs the vessel, right? Right??
- adventured 6y ago
  Does the UN still exist?
  - EGreg 6y ago
    This is why we should work to transform the UN Peacekepeers into a militarized world police, composed of volunteers from countries all over the world. While simultaneously drawing down and disarming the world’s militaries. UN inspectors would be allowed into any member country, to inspect potential human rights violations, nuclear and chemical weapons development, and large environmental hazards. They need to have teeth to enforce things. The Peacekeepers should be a decentralized organization with only three main rules: 1. Your only job is to defuse existing conflicts and violence, and force warring sides to resort to using courts and diplomacy. 2. Anyone in the organization found breaking the first rule (using force to take sides or escalate a conflict, like Norriega) will be put on trial and executed if found guilty. 3. Any alumnus of the organization breaking the first rule is likewise hunted down, captured and put on trial. The only difference is, if they are not on active duty, they aren’t even empowered to carry out Rule #1 fully but must call on-duty reinforcements. Don’t like it - don’t join the peacekeepers. Every cadet would be trained in these three rules, so no one can take over the peacekeepers and rule the world. And there is a set of rules that all countries can abide by: 4. If there is a sectarian conflict between groups A, B and C in a region, only peacekeepers from countries and backgrounds with no serious stake in who wins can intervene. Others are sanctioned / excluded from that conflict etc. 5. The peacekeepers wear a specific and unmistakable white-themed uniform. Anyone in any country caught impersonating their uniform would constitute a criminal offense, like impersonating a police officer. 6. They all wear body cameras, they present themselves and warn any armed combatants or terrorists to put down their weapons or they will shoot to kill. They are also able to pre-emtively kill in certain situations where they can prove massive harm (eg a bomb) and that a warning could have allowed it to happen. This monopoly on force would probably lead to a net reduction in harm, assuming it can’t be taken over or corrupted.
sradman 6y ago
The article is based on the following two lines in the paper/article Science, Diplomacy, and the Red Sea’s Unique Coral Reef: It’s Time for Action [1] > The reefs are also threatened by potential oil spillage from oil pipelines and offshore storage facilities. In the southern-most section of the Red Sea the SAFER tanker, a floating oil storage and offloading unit (FSO) anchored off the coast of Yemen, holds 1.1 million barrels of oil and has begun to leak its cargo, a consequence of political and military conflicts in the area which hamper remediation and international intervention (World Maritime News, 2019). FSO Safer [2] "is a floating oil storage and offloading vessel that is moored in the Red Sea north of the Yemeni city of Al Hudaydah." > In March 2015, in the early days of the Yemeni Civil War, Safer fell into the hands of Houthi forces when they took control of the coastline surrounding her mooring. > In late November, the United Nations and Houthi leadership reached an agreement to allow a UN-led team access to Safer by January 2021 for purposes of inspection and repair. [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.00090/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.0009... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSO_Safer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSO_Safer
aksss 6y ago
Deepwater Horizon spilled over 10 times as much oil as the Exxon spill and the affected ecosystem is more comparable to what’s at risk here than the one in Alaska. Most people reading this may be too young to even remember the Exxon spill. Deepwater seems like a better comparison.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  This is a fascinating article on that: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/bp-oil-spill-still-dont-know-effects-decade-later/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/bp-oil-sp...
sandworm101 6y ago
WTF was an oil tanker 7km out to sea being used as a storage facility for land oil? And downstream from a coral reef! This is not about offshore oil platforms. This is about oil from land wells pumped out for storage at sea. This should be illegal at an international level. Keep such oil on land where a spill is vastly less damaging and far easier to clean up. This whole thing reads like a Captain Planet episode.
- o-__-o 6y ago
  Remember when front month oil futures went negative? This is why. We pumped too much oil and there is nowhere for it go. Eventually infrastructure fails
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Then pump it back down to where we found it.
    - omegaworks 6y ago
      Probably can't do that. If it was fracked, the area where it was found is now full of a denser slurry of water and minimally-regulated hazardous chemicals[1]. 1. https://www.fractracker.org/resources/oil-and-gas-101/fracking-fluid/ https://www.fractracker.org/resources/oil-and-gas-101/fracki...
      - baud147258 6y ago
        and even for oil that's not extracted by fracking, oil is still mostly leaving the reservoir on its own (though you have then to pump it to the surface)
- baud147258 6y ago
  it is cheaper to just move around a FSO than build up the necessary infrastructure. And once the wells have dried up, the FSO could have been moved elsewhere at least
Neil44 6y ago
If anyone was as curious as me to see pics, here's a condition report from 2019. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/energysource/onboard-the-fso-safer-a-preview/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/energysource/onboard-t...
WalterBright 6y ago
Tankers need to be equipped with external ports on each side for easy ways to drain them in the event of shipwreck.
- nradov 6y ago
  So more potential leak points? You're really optimizing for the wrong problem there.
Ancapistani 6y ago
It appears that this is the ship on Google Earth: https://earth.app.goo.gl/?link=https://earth.google.com/web/search/FSO%2BSafer%2BAbandoned%2BTanker,%2BAl%2BHudaydah,%2BYemen/@14.83591907,42.93225727,-0.04712768a,280.90589862d,35y,34.88760278h,0t,0r/data%3DCigiJgokCalDh4B5mDFAETL-2BHUhipAGUkCB20QmUtAIXl7JGkAxUhA?fdl%3D1&apn=com.google.earth&isi=293622097&ibi=com.google.b612&ius=googleearth&cid=4991604399623627092&_iipp=1&_icp=1 https://earth.app.goo.gl/?link=https://earth.google.com/web/...

188 points by samizdis 6y ago

tomohawk 6y ago

Houthis (backed by Iran) control it. Good luck.

wffurr 6y ago
FTA: "The New York Times reported on November 24 that the Houthis will grant permission to a United Nations (UN) team to board the Safer to inspect and repair the vessel in the near future."
- nradov 6y ago
  So the inspection hasn't actually been granted. And while the ship is floating in the open sea loaded with flammable cargo it's nearly impossible to conduct the sort of structural repairs that would be necessary to stop the oil spills.
djohnston 6y ago
From the article it seems like they're allowing a UN team to come in and investigate/repair, and I hope they'll be allowed to do what is necessary. This would be a good moment for the UN to demonstrate its value when it is often criticised as ineffective.
unstatusthequo 6y ago
I’d love to see some “vigilante tanker” come drill into it and heist the oil out to eliminate the threat. Environmental terrorism is what is occurring here. Houthis should be treated as such. This is why Iran can’t have nice things.
- ada1981 6y ago
  Sounds like Trump may be right that this is a terrorist group. Clean up your mess or you are the mess that needs cleaned up.

samizdis 6y ago

Article in Frontiers in Marine Science cited in the SciTechDaily piece. "A Closing Window of Opportunity to Save a Unique Marine Ecosystem" https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.615733/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.6157...

GreeniFi 6y ago

It’s interesting that the article does not attribute responsibility. Ultimately, that tanker was under the control of a group of decision-makers and liability should be attributed. I say this, because what pollution is in economic terms is the movement of cost from one person’s balance sheet to another’s - whether by hook or by crook. We do ourselves a disfavour when we don’t identify how liability moves.

samizdis 6y ago
According to an article in the current edition of Private Eye (a UK magazine): The Safer has sat off our [Yemen] coast, abandoned and rapidly decaying, for the last five years. Our government-in-exile ... claims ownership of the vessel."
- GreeniFi 6y ago
  Private Eye is one of the few publications which identifies this type of detail. I’m a regular buyer. Thanks for sharing.
  - samizdis 6y ago
    I'll add some more from the article, then, repeating the initial quote in full and then carrying on. The Safer has sat off our coast, abandoned and rapidly decaying, for the last five years. Our official government-in-exile, led by the useless President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, claims ownership of the vessel but is squabbling with the Houthis over who gets its load of rapidly degrading crude, estimated to be worth $30m. To make matters worse, Donald Trump is thinking of officially declaring the Houthis as terrorists, just as they were on the verge of allowing UN access to the ship. (This was from PE No. 1537, cover date 18 December 2020.)
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
My impression is that the decision makers have become very good at creating ambiguity for this exact purpose, there is even a wiki article for 'diffusion of responsibility" For instance McLaren company has a couple thousand kegal entities sprincled around the world, and its is a relatively recent phenomena

chx 6y ago

This is where an international navy staffed by blue helmets comes in and grabs the vessel, right? Right??

adventured 6y ago
Does the UN still exist?
- EGreg 6y ago
  This is why we should work to transform the UN Peacekepeers into a militarized world police, composed of volunteers from countries all over the world. While simultaneously drawing down and disarming the world’s militaries. UN inspectors would be allowed into any member country, to inspect potential human rights violations, nuclear and chemical weapons development, and large environmental hazards. They need to have teeth to enforce things. The Peacekeepers should be a decentralized organization with only three main rules: 1. Your only job is to defuse existing conflicts and violence, and force warring sides to resort to using courts and diplomacy. 2. Anyone in the organization found breaking the first rule (using force to take sides or escalate a conflict, like Norriega) will be put on trial and executed if found guilty. 3. Any alumnus of the organization breaking the first rule is likewise hunted down, captured and put on trial. The only difference is, if they are not on active duty, they aren’t even empowered to carry out Rule #1 fully but must call on-duty reinforcements. Don’t like it - don’t join the peacekeepers. Every cadet would be trained in these three rules, so no one can take over the peacekeepers and rule the world. And there is a set of rules that all countries can abide by: 4. If there is a sectarian conflict between groups A, B and C in a region, only peacekeepers from countries and backgrounds with no serious stake in who wins can intervene. Others are sanctioned / excluded from that conflict etc. 5. The peacekeepers wear a specific and unmistakable white-themed uniform. Anyone in any country caught impersonating their uniform would constitute a criminal offense, like impersonating a police officer. 6. They all wear body cameras, they present themselves and warn any armed combatants or terrorists to put down their weapons or they will shoot to kill. They are also able to pre-emtively kill in certain situations where they can prove massive harm (eg a bomb) and that a warning could have allowed it to happen. This monopoly on force would probably lead to a net reduction in harm, assuming it can’t be taken over or corrupted.

sradman 6y ago

The article is based on the following two lines in the paper/article Science, Diplomacy, and the Red Sea’s Unique Coral Reef: It’s Time for Action [1] > The reefs are also threatened by potential oil spillage from oil pipelines and offshore storage facilities. In the southern-most section of the Red Sea the SAFER tanker, a floating oil storage and offloading unit (FSO) anchored off the coast of Yemen, holds 1.1 million barrels of oil and has begun to leak its cargo, a consequence of political and military conflicts in the area which hamper remediation and international intervention (World Maritime News, 2019). FSO Safer [2] "is a floating oil storage and offloading vessel that is moored in the Red Sea north of the Yemeni city of Al Hudaydah." > In March 2015, in the early days of the Yemeni Civil War, Safer fell into the hands of Houthi forces when they took control of the coastline surrounding her mooring. > In late November, the United Nations and Houthi leadership reached an agreement to allow a UN-led team access to Safer by January 2021 for purposes of inspection and repair. [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.00090/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.0009... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSO_Safer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSO_Safer

aksss 6y ago

Deepwater Horizon spilled over 10 times as much oil as the Exxon spill and the affected ecosystem is more comparable to what’s at risk here than the one in Alaska. Most people reading this may be too young to even remember the Exxon spill. Deepwater seems like a better comparison.

cbozeman 6y ago
This is a fascinating article on that: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/bp-oil-spill-still-dont-know-effects-decade-later/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/bp-oil-sp...

sandworm101 6y ago

WTF was an oil tanker 7km out to sea being used as a storage facility for land oil? And downstream from a coral reef! This is not about offshore oil platforms. This is about oil from land wells pumped out for storage at sea. This should be illegal at an international level. Keep such oil on land where a spill is vastly less damaging and far easier to clean up. This whole thing reads like a Captain Planet episode.

o-__-o 6y ago
Remember when front month oil futures went negative? This is why. We pumped too much oil and there is nowhere for it go. Eventually infrastructure fails
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Then pump it back down to where we found it.
  - omegaworks 6y ago
    Probably can't do that. If it was fracked, the area where it was found is now full of a denser slurry of water and minimally-regulated hazardous chemicals[1]. 1. https://www.fractracker.org/resources/oil-and-gas-101/fracking-fluid/ https://www.fractracker.org/resources/oil-and-gas-101/fracki...
    - baud147258 6y ago
      and even for oil that's not extracted by fracking, oil is still mostly leaving the reservoir on its own (though you have then to pump it to the surface)
baud147258 6y ago
it is cheaper to just move around a FSO than build up the necessary infrastructure. And once the wells have dried up, the FSO could have been moved elsewhere at least

Neil44 6y ago

If anyone was as curious as me to see pics, here's a condition report from 2019. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/energysource/onboard-the-fso-safer-a-preview/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/energysource/onboard-t...

WalterBright 6y ago

Tankers need to be equipped with external ports on each side for easy ways to drain them in the event of shipwreck.

nradov 6y ago
So more potential leak points? You're really optimizing for the wrong problem there.

Ancapistani 6y ago

It appears that this is the ship on Google Earth: https://earth.app.goo.gl/?link=https://earth.google.com/web/search/FSO%2BSafer%2BAbandoned%2BTanker,%2BAl%2BHudaydah,%2BYemen/@14.83591907,42.93225727,-0.04712768a,280.90589862d,35y,34.88760278h,0t,0r/data%3DCigiJgokCalDh4B5mDFAETL-2BHUhipAGUkCB20QmUtAIXl7JGkAxUhA?fdl%3D1&apn=com.google.earth&isi=293622097&ibi=com.google.b612&ius=googleearth&cid=4991604399623627092&_iipp=1&_icp=1 https://earth.app.goo.gl/?link=https://earth.google.com/web/...