The United Nations said Friday that it has successfully completed a complex operation to transfer more than a million barrels of oil from an aging supertanker off Yemen's Red Sea coast onto a salvage vessel, averting a potential environmental catastrophe. "We have, I think against many odds, managed to complete an operation that many talked about for years," U.N. Development Program Administrator Achim Steiner told reporters in a video call. "Many were concerned it couldn't really be done. Many questioned why it took the U.N. long to implement it." The planning, fundraising and obtaining permissions from the local authorities took years. The actual transfer of the oil took 18 days of around-the-clock pumping. Steiner noted that when the United Nations was asked to undertake the operation, there was no one else ready or prepared to do it. The U.N. has raised about $121 million of the $143 million needed to purchase a large crude carrier, retain a global sal
Red Sea: UN successfully transfers Yemeni vessel carrying millions barrels of oil
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UN Successfully Transfers Million Barrels of Oil off Decaying Yemen Tanker
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The United Nations said Tuesday that a long-awaited operation has begun to remove more than a million barrels of oil from an aging supertanker off Yemen's Red Sea coast, averting a potential environmental disaster. "As of this morning, we are very pleased to report that the pumps are on, the pipes have been laid between the FSO Safer and the Yemen the replacement tanker and the first gallons of oil have in fact been pumped off the Safer onto the Yemen," U.N. Development Program Administrator Achim Steiner told reporters. The ship-to-ship transfer will continue around the clock and is expected to take 19 days. The FSO Safer was the subject of more than three years of appeals from the U.N. and environmental organizations who warned that a lack of maintenance during Yemen's civil war meant the decaying tanker was at risk of spilling four times as much oil as happened in the 1989 disaster involving the Exxon Valdez off the coast of Alaska. The Safer is one more casu