The 'Safer' Oil Tanker: Defusing an Environmental Time Bomb in the Red Sea

In this podcast we summarize a discussion we recently moderated on a looming environmental catastrophe off the coast of Yemen, which, if it was to occur, would lead to an oil leak 100 times the size of the recent Mauritius spill. The source of this threat is the FSO Safer, an offshore storage vessel near the Yemeni coast, which carries over 1.1 million barrels of oil, but has not been maintained properly for years. Given this lack of maintenance, it is now at risk of either leaking or exploding. Any preventative action is complicated by the current civil war in Yemen. In this podcast, we discuss these challenges as well as potential solutions.