Since 1988, the hulking form of the FSO Safer has floated in the Red Sea, receiving crude oil from the bountiful Marib oilfields of Yemen. For 30 years, the ship was a critical piece of infrastructure in Yemen’s booming oil industry, which at one time generated 63% of government revenue.
But the civil war broke out in 2014, and most of the Safer’s crew were forced to abandon ship, leaving behind its cargo: 1.1m barrels of oil. Against mounting costs and security risks, maintaining the vessel became nearimpossible.
When leaks in the engine room in 2020 threatened to sink the ship, it stoked fears of what would happen if the cargo – four times more oil than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989 – plunged into the ocean. So,
