A catastrophe
October 4, 2021 5:22 PM   Subscribe

The Ship that Became a Bomb Stranded in Yemen’s war zone, a decaying supertanker has more than a million barrels of oil aboard. If—or when—it explodes or sinks, thousands may die. SL NewYorker.

So much more to this story than "just" a leaking oil tanker. The warp and weft of violence over oil, and the decades-long hangover of imperialism and the cold war, in combination with the astonishing corruption of the Yemeni state, international paralysis and the current ruthless regional power plays continue to cause untold suffering in Yemen.
posted by lalochezia (28 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
Love to see a part of the world where an obvious, almost too-literal ticking time bomb refuses to prompt any sort of concerted action.

It's a super-exciting preview of what sort of action current, ongoing, and impending climate change could possibly spur.
posted by rhooke at 9:14 PM on October 4, 2021 [3 favorites]


Love to see a part of the world where an obvious, almost too-literal ticking time bomb refuses to prompt any sort of concerted action.

i don't think that's fair. according to the article, the houthis are using this ship as an environmental hostage situation, demanding payment they need to fight their war in exchange for assistance in solving the problem. but no third party should be expected to pay their ransom like this and assist them for the privilege of trying (and perhaps failing, even in good faith) to solve this catastrophe, and then take the blame if it goes wrong. and certainly nobody is going to send in minesweepers and gunboats to kill them and take over the boat (which, again, says the article, may be booby-trapped to explode) to prevent the environmental disaster, and possibly lose people in combat.

if this thing turns into a disaster, blame the saudis for their insane war in the first place, blame the houthis for the ransom, blame the iranians for backing the houthis, approximately in that order.
posted by wibari at 11:03 PM on October 4, 2021 [13 favorites]


The poor engineers patching the the thing along, for years on end, and the electrician who was just visiting? In the heat and the strange smell and knowing it might burn or explode around
posted by clew at 11:14 PM on October 4, 2021 [3 favorites]


In Louisiana, we call that a "Playspot"

Huntington Beach

South Timbalier

i think the oil bidness might be the terrorists, y'all
posted by eustatic at 3:57 AM on October 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


But seriously, doesn't Exxon have a few boats it can donate to the Houthis to pump this stuff out, sitting off of Galveston?
posted by eustatic at 4:24 AM on October 5, 2021


or, upon reading, just let the iranians get their boat there, the dutch, whoever? the dangerous thing is to play footsie with the liability until it's too late--oh wait, i'm just describing the oil industry business model again
posted by eustatic at 4:41 AM on October 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


If this were only a technical issue, it could be managed and (probably) safely defused. I've seen greater technical challenges solved without ever raising concern (eg getting oil off of sunken wrecks that are in considerably worse shape). I imagine solutions could be found within weeks to solve the problem, were it allowed and a reasonable budget in place.
posted by bonehead at 5:42 AM on October 5, 2021 [8 favorites]


As I read this, I think about how many of the world's problems today are the result of looting by the wealthy - every system everywhere is fragile and held together with string and bubblegum because of the slow collapse of funding in order to keep money in the pockets of the rich. Why, for instance, can the UN's mission to Yemen - a country in catastrophe - be described as "overstretched and underfunded"? Why does UNICEF have "no plan B"? This is precisely the place that should have plans B, C and D. And of course, it's not because UNICEF is sitting there thinking, "this isn't very important", it's because relatively speaking only a pittance goes to maintain systems and deal with problems on a global scale and even this pittance has been declining for years.
posted by Frowner at 6:02 AM on October 5, 2021 [14 favorites]


Lebanon blew up just 13 months ago.
posted by srboisvert at 6:46 AM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Deleted SEVERAL. This post is about a specific oil tanker enmeshed in a specific set of historical and political circumstances. If this thread becomes the same six users repeating the same six arguments about The Middle East generally, American Imperialism generally, and Israel/Palestine generally, we will delete it. This is not the place for hobbyhorsing about your pet issues surrounding those hot-button topics. Based on early comments, I am not convinced this is an article MetaFilter is capable of discussing within the rules and without using it as a proxy to have preferred arguments. Prove me wrong, guys.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:12 AM on October 5, 2021 [31 favorites]


But seriously, doesn't Exxon have a few boats it can donate to the Houthis to pump this stuff out, sitting off of Galveston?

From the article:

Some observers also believe that the Houthis have laid mines in the waters around the Safer. Many coastal regions under Houthi control have been booby-trapped this way. If explosives indeed surround the ship, nobody knows their exact locations. According to sources in Ras Issa, the port closest to the ship, the Houthi officer responsible for laying mines in the area was killed.

So, not only would you need those oil company boats, you'd also need some Navy minesweepers, and probably some escorts to keep those crews safe while they were doing the work. (Not to mention people willing to do the work while under constant danger that it will just cook off spontaneously, or that they will be attacked, or both.) Given the issues in the area, that seems kind of problematic.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:19 AM on October 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


"Ratcliffe told me that this calculation is still valid in 2021. “We have no Plan B,” he said. “It would be a catastrophic situation.”"

This is really quite chilling.
posted by xedrik at 7:48 AM on October 5, 2021


Ungated version
posted by chavenet at 8:08 AM on October 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


If you want to see what damage a tanker explosion can do, read about the Whiddy Island disaster. The Safer looks a little further out to sea (thanks for tagging it as a "museum", Google Maps ...) but the environmental impact would be huge
posted by scruss at 8:37 AM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


The insurer Allianz estimated that when the container ship Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week, this past March, the incident cost about a billion dollars a day. Ships rarely traverse oil-contaminated waters, especially when a cleanup is in progress, and their insurance can be imperiled if they do. A spill from the Safer could take months to clear, imposing a toll of tens of billions of dollars on the shipping business and the industries it services. ACAPS estimated that the cleanup alone could cost twenty billion dollars.

So, a spill of this thing would shut down the approach to the Suez Canal, for months. I think that would be another Black Swan event for the world economy.
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:53 AM on October 5, 2021




scruss' link about the Whiddy Island disaster is pretty relevant, particularly because one of the indirect causes of the disaster was the closure of the Suez Canal as a result of the Six Day War. This led to new types of ultra-large tankers (ULCCs) coming around the Cape and up the Atlantic to Europe, which is I suppose what they will have to do if the ship in Yemen explodes or ruptures and spills.

It looks to me like the Iranians are really the only ones who can do much to affect the situation at this point. They're the ones at the end of the Houthis leash; if Tehran tells them to stop screwing around and let a salvage team in, I'd imagine that would do the job. But absent that, it's hard to imagine anyone going in there with the resources necessary to repair or pump out the oil.

The article does mention that the Iranians have seemingly made some overtures, but that the Houthis don't take them seriously—which is a bit strange, as you would think there are other lines of communication between the Houthis and Iran other than the public ones. From the outside, it looks like Iran is playing the same game as the Houthis, using the Safer—and the lives of Yemeni civilians—as a bargaining chip.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:57 AM on October 5, 2021 [3 favorites]


If you want to see what damage a tanker explosion can do, read about the Whiddy Island disaster.

"also known as the Betelgeuse incident". Someone just had to say it.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:23 AM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


I'm a big fan of solving problems with money if possible because that's kind of the easiest way to solve something. Much easier than getting people to do things they don't want to. If someone just gave the Houthis $100,000,000 for the tanker they'd probably take it, and this would be significantly cheaper than just the cleanup costs for when the Safer sinks/explodes let alone the other economic, humanitarian, and environmental costs. Of course I don't think giving the Houthis $100,000,000 is what most people would consider a good idea, and the Saudis in particular would probably do whatever they could to stop this from happening, but that's probably the easiest way of getting this thing done.

Considering how my country, Canada, has been selling arms to the Saudis which are then being used to attack Yemen, we don't have a moral leg to stand on, but in that case maybe an immoral solution like the one above is the way to go.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:01 PM on October 5, 2021 [4 favorites]


Metafilter: the same six users repeating the same six arguments
posted by kjs3 at 12:49 PM on October 5, 2021 [6 favorites]


This brings to mind the Mosul Dam and last years Beirut explosion.

Perhaps closest was the Beirut explosion. In Beirut a cargo ship full of ammonium nitrate got stranded when the ships owner went bankrupt. Eventually the cargo got offloaded, put in a warehouse and left there. Port officials knew it was a massive danger and asked the government to do something; but no one could agree on what to do and everyone wanted to get a cut of any money that might be made from it. Reading reports afterwards you get the sense that people in charge just didn't think it was possible that it could blow up, even though experts were warning them and if it blew up they couldn't visualize what it would mean. Kind of like people building on the beach, unable to comprehend the reality of global warming, or a hurricane's storm surge.

I also think the author fails to really consider the Houthi perspective on this and instead seems to be justifying the insane Atlantic Council plan -- lets go an send in the military and take it. The author even presents the Houthi as crazy, ignorant people who don't realize they are "holding a gun to their own heads" -- seeming to justify this military option as a white savior action.

An alternative way to see things, with some more empathy and understanding is: The Safer has been a vital link in oil exports from Yemen for decades. Those exports were largely looted by the former dictator who amassed a fortune of $60 Billion Dollars. The ship was put there by foreign companies who came in and extracted the oil and enabled this enrichment of the dictator while they were poor and brutalized the regime.

Now the same people who setup and empowered the old regime say the ship can't be repaired and offer to take it away. I suspect there is a significant lack of trust. The Safer might not be able to be repaired or returned to operating condition, but if it is taken off by a salvage company; then it certainly won't be. Then what does Yemen have? They have nothing, not even the hope that the ship represents.

And of course their neighbors concern over a possible catastrophe that would affect the Red Sea gives them some leverage here. From their perspective the international community is saying we take your ship, solve our problem and give you nothing in return. Well of course they are going to turn that deal down. What leader would accept that? The political ramifications might be fatal -- oh you let the colonizers take away a key element of our oil export facilities with no replacement and no concessions. That's a hard sell.

The danger the ship represents is also difficult to the Yemini on the street. I mean you've been getting bombed, faced episodic extreme food scarcity, been rounded and chased around by the various factions for years -- compared to those ongoing threats to daily survival -- what is one more.
posted by interogative mood at 1:37 PM on October 5, 2021 [12 favorites]


Personally, I think Ed Caesar did a pretty good job of trying to reflect the various perspectives: from the crew and local engineers on the vessel itself, out to the Houthi's, the Yemanis as a whole - and to the wider players in Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UN, etc. Just the act of getting to talk to all the people on his interview list - and of getting to all the places he needed to visit to get a background- are considerable achievements. The problem is that no one party has the credibility with the others to be the "adult in the room" and take charge of a solution.

Caesar mentions that the tanker safety experts, and former employees of the new bankrupt SEPOC oil company - are more worried about the impact of Safer sinking than they are about it exploding. For that reason, I suspect that both the Houthis and the Saudi's will have plans to make sure that it is surreptitiously detonated before it sinks.

My thoughts are with the hapless skeleton crew also: trapped on a stinking dead ship, in a minefield, under fire from drone attacks, that is tipped to either explode or sink imminently. Think your job is tough...
posted by rongorongo at 1:37 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


(One traveller's experience of the Farasan Islands - as mentioned in the article. Looks beautiful)
posted by rongorongo at 1:47 AM on October 6, 2021


Made an account after daily lurking for over a decade just to comment on this piece. I work on this issue, so I thought I'd weigh in. For context, I'm a US-based researcher working closely with Yemeni collaborators. My opinion is the article is well-written and researched, but suffers from an American neoliberal bias -- namely that it understates the humanitarian and environmental impacts, overstates the economic impacts, and omits the USA's role in perpetuating this nightmare.

Humanitarian toll: Port closures (Salif and Hudaydah) means no food, fuel, and medical supplies in north Yemen. Almost everything runs on fuel, including medical services and water supplies (pumps/trucks), so further fuel shortages means countless deaths through dehydration, water-borne illness, and lack of medical care. The article does correctly note that food shortages (for millions of people) will lead to hundreds of thouands of deaths. This is in a country already suffering from famine, cholera outbreaks, 50% of medical services being shut down, fuel shortages, airstrikes, covid, etc.

Environmental costs: The coral reefs in the Red Sea are known for their resilience to temperature changes, and could be useful for climate change research as coral reefs elsewhere die out (1, 2). Losing these reefs would be, well, very bad. Also note that oil spill "cleanups" are very ineffective and mostly serve as performative propaganda from oil companies. Spills are largely irreversible and the vast majority of the oil will not be recovered.

Economic costs: It's not so clear to me that the Safer spilling would affect global trade the way the Ever Given blockage did. The oil aboard the Safer is a crude light, so the light components (volatile, flammable, etc) will evaporate within a few days, leaving the heavier, non-volatile components behind on the water. So sailing through the spill seems not ideal, but doable and not a fire hazard. Most of the major global shipping lanes can just go around the expected spill trajectories anyway, so I don't see it affecting global trade all that much? Not a maritime trade expert though, so happy to be corrected.

American involvement: Why is Yemen so vulnerable to port closures? Because of Saudi Arabia's repugnant blockade, preventing supplies from coming in to the country and killing children of starvation. Who has funded Saudi Arabia's involvement in the war? The USA. The US has ended "offensive" involvement in the war, but is still involved. Pinning this situation entirely on the Houthis (who are also villains, but haven't bombed hospitals/water supplies and starved hundreds of thouands of children to death the way Saudi Arabia has), is a deliberate misdirection from the very real role the US could play in helping avert this catastrophe: fully ending US involvement in the war, or at least using the US-Saudi Arabia influence to play a stronger role in negotiations over the Safer.

(disclaimer: the above is just my opinion after having worked on this for so long. Apologies in advance if I broke any guidelines, I made sure not to link anything related to my or my collaborators' works to stay anonymous and avoid breaking self-promotion rules.)
posted by bongerino at 3:58 AM on October 6, 2021 [33 favorites]


Fyi that sort of "self promotion" is totally fine and even encouraged in comments.
posted by Mitheral at 4:45 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


Hi bongerino, moderator here. Welcome to Metafilter and thanks for sharing your informed perspective! This is exactly the kind of contribution we hope for here. Mitheral is exactly right, in comments it's fine to link to your own stuff (provided it's non-spammy and linked with full disclosure).
posted by LobsterMitten at 5:42 AM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


Thank you, bongerino for unlurking for such a fantastic comment! Flagged as such. Very informative.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 8:17 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


Also note that oil spill "cleanups" are very ineffective and mostly serve as performative propaganda from oil companies. Spills are largely irreversible and the vast majority of the oil will not be recovered.

The article cited includes refence to my work and that of my colleagues. I could quibble with some details, but not with the overall conclusions. Source containment around the ship is the only real way of dealing with this.

One thing human efforts can do is attempt to direct where a spill might end up in the environment, for the right kind of oil, under the right conditions. That's the propose of dispersants, and they have been used effectively to do so, including the DWH spill.

In this case, they would be a bad idea to use, the vessel is close to shore, the seas are shallow and the pelagic and benthic species are vulnerable. But that choice means that many surface species, like birds and other sea surface dwellers would perish.
posted by bonehead at 8:38 AM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


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