The United Nations has launched a public crowdfunding drive that aims to raise $5 million towards an operation to avoid an oil spill from a decaying tanker stranded off the coast of Yemen, a U.N. official said on Monday.<\/p>\n
The United Nations has secured some $60 million out of $80 million needed to initially offload the Safer tanker which holds 1.1 million barrels – four times as much oil as spilled during the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in the United States.<\/p>\n
“We are calling on the public to help us cross the finish line to get that first $80 million in place,” by the end of the month, David Gressly, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, told a news briefing on the risk of an environmental disaster in the Red Sea.<\/p>\n
He said that every dollar the public contributed would send a message to countries, companies and foundations that they “also need to act now before it’s too late”.<\/p>\n
The campaign, which follows a similar multipronged approach to funding for aid to Ukraine, opens on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The U.N. plan is to transfer the oil to a safe temporary vessel and then arrange long-term replacement storage. The entire operation requires $144 million.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia and the United States recently pledged $10 million each.<\/p>\n
The Safer has been stranded off Ras Issa oil terminal without maintenance since 2015, when a Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen against the Houthi movement that ousted the internationally recognized government from the capital, Sanaa.<\/p>\n
U.N. officials want the operation done by September when winter seas would increase the risk of a break up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Nations has launched a public crowdfunding drive that aims to raise $5 million towards an operation to avoid an oil spill from a decaying tanker stranded off the coast of Yemen, a U.N. official said on Monday. The United Nations has secured some $60 million out of $80 million needed to initially offload […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-17998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maritime-safety-news","tag-marine-safety-alert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/developmenttask.com\/ShipIpLtd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/developmenttask.com\/ShipIpLtd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/developmenttask.com\/ShipIpLtd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/developmenttask.com\/ShipIpLtd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/developmenttask.com\/ShipIpLtd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/developmenttask.com\/ShipIpLtd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/developmenttask.com\/ShipIpLtd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/developmenttask.com\/ShipIpLtd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/developmenttask.com\/ShipIpLtd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}