杏吧原创

A huge abandoned oil tanker anchored off Yemen could unleash a catastrophic oil spill in the Red Sea, bringing starvation and death to the region, according to an analysis of the potential health impacts of such a disaster.

The tanker, called Safer, is anchored about 9 kilometres off the coast of Yemen. It is owned by Yemen鈥檚 national oil company, The Safer Exploration & Production Operations Company (SEPOC), which once used it to store crude oil. In March 2015, SEPOC abandoned the ship after it was captured by Ansar Allah, a rebel group commonly known as the Houthis who are combatants in Yemen鈥檚 civil war.

Safer hasn鈥檛 been inspected or maintained since 2015. It was built in 1976 and should have reached the end of its working life in 2016, but is still afloat with approximately 150,000 tonnes of oil inside its fragile single hull. It is visibly dilapidated and 鈥渃ontinues to deteriorate鈥�, according to at Stanford University in California. A gigantic oil spill is increasingly likely, he says.

A team led by Huynh modelled the public health effects of such a spill. 鈥淲e鈥檙e looking at a potential humanitarian catastrophe: millions without food or clean water, outbreaks of waterborne illness and mass hospital shutdowns due to lack of fuel,鈥� says Huynh.

Around half of Yemen鈥檚 30 million people depend on food aid, 68 per cent of which enters the country through two Red Sea ports, Hudaydah and Salif. An uncontained spill would close both ports within days and keep them closed for weeks. Up to 8.1 million people wouldn鈥檛 receive food aid for the duration. If the spill spread into the Gulf of Aden, that number could rise to 11.9 million, according to the modelling.

A spill would also shut down the Red Sea fishing industry, which provides subsistence for a further 1.7 million people. Yemen is already on the brink of famine, says Huynh.

Desalination plants that supply more than a million people with drinking water would be disrupted too. Many other Yemenis rely on groundwater pumps and water trucks, which require fuel. Yemen imports more than 90 per cent of its fuel, and previous port closures have led to severe shortages.

Air pollution from the spill 鈥� especially if it catches fire 鈥� would also cause an epidemic of respiratory and cardiac illness, Huynh and his colleagues found. In the worst-case scenario, hospitalisations for these conditions would rise by 42 per cent, putting further pressure on Yemen鈥檚 health system. Port closures would hamper supplies of medicines, and fuel shortages could force hospitals to close.

This would add to stresses on healthcare already in place due to compounding economic issues, several epidemics and the covid-19 pandemic. In May, the UN said that Yemen鈥檚 health system had collapsed.

鈥淚f the Safer breaks up, of course they cannot cope with that,鈥� says Jens Laerke at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. 鈥淭he Yemen health system is already in shambles, to put it bluntly.鈥�

The disruptions could amplify one another, says Huynh. Previous port closures caused by blockades led to a breakdown of the water and sewage systems, rubbish collection and electricity supplies, all of which contributed to a cholera outbreak in Yemen, which peaked in 2017.

There is a simple solution to the impending disaster, says Huynh: get the oil off the ship. But there is no plan to do so. In November 2020, the Houthis gave the UN permission to board the ship to carry out inspections and light repairs. The visit was scheduled for January, but is delayed indefinitely after relations broke down.

The UN and its specialist agency, the International Maritime Organization, say they are helping Yemeni authorities to plan an emergency response, but the ongoing civil war makes it extremely difficult. 鈥淭here aren鈥檛 any precautionary measures right now to mitigate the spill鈥檚 impacts,鈥� says Huynh.

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