Uploaded October 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
AL JAZIRAH, YEMEN — Yemen’s civil war has generated the perfect conditions for a massive oil spill to happen. Here are the details:
The Guardian reports that an abandoned and rusting oil tanker with 1.1 million barrels of oil on board is like a ticking time bomb that can easily break up and cover the Yemen coastline under tons of crude oil.
The FSO Safer is a single-hulled tanker that carries four times more oil than was spilled during the massive Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
The ship was abandoned in 2017 and keeps on deteriorating while Yemen’s Houthi rebels fight a civil war against a Saudi-led coalition on the land next to it.
In May 2020, water entered the ship’s engine room through a leaking pipe, and the vessel's fire extinguishing system is now non-operational, according to a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Researchers say a hull breach would cover important coral reefs in oil, while also closing desalination plants and cutting 9 million people off from clean water.
The likely oil spill would also destroy a big part of Yemen’s fish sources at a time when the country is starting to suffer from a famine.
The rebels, who control the area where the ship is located, have previously blocked UN inspectors from assessing the vessel.
However, the Houthis have repeatedly blamed the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting them for preventing UN inspectors access to the tanker.
AL JAZIRAH, YEMEN — Yemen’s civil war has generated the perfect conditions for a massive oil spill to happen. Here are the details:
The Guardian reports that an abandoned and rusting oil tanker with 1.1 million barrels of oil on board is like a ticking time bomb that can easily break up and cover the Yemen coastline under tons of crude oil.
The FSO Safer is a single-hulled tanker that carries four times more oil than was spilled during the massive Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
The ship was abandoned in 2017 and keeps on deteriorating while Yemen’s Houthi rebels fight a civil war against a Saudi-led coalition on the land next to it.
In May 2020, water entered the ship’s engine room through a leaking pipe, and the vessel's fire extinguishing system is now non-operational, according to a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Researchers say a hull breach would cover important coral reefs in oil, while also closing desalination plants and cutting 9 million people off from clean water.
The likely oil spill would also destroy a big part of Yemen’s fish sources at a time when the country is starting to suffer from a famine.
The rebels, who control the area where the ship is located, have previously blocked UN inspectors from assessing the vessel.
However, the Houthis have repeatedly blamed the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting them for preventing UN inspectors access to the tanker.


![Abu Dhabi Drone Attack: Houthi Rebels Target Abu Dhabi Airport in Brutal Exchange
ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — Yemen’s Houthi rebels say they are responsible for deadly drone attacks in the United Arab Emirates on Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal.
One attack caused fires that saw three petroleum tankers explode near state oil firm ADNOC’s storage facilities, killing three people, while a second attack occured at a construction site near Abu Dhabi International Airport, according to an Abu Dhabi police statement cited by CNBC, disrupting flights.
The Houthis are thought to have been retaliating against the UAE’s increased role in the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting against it in the Yemen civil war, with the Yemeni Foreign Ministry saying it reflected “Houthi desperation after rebel defeats in Marib [c]and Shabwa [d]provinces.”
In retaliation for this attack, Saudi coalition airstrikes killed 11 people in Yemen, including at least five civilians, according to the U.N.
The MIT Center for International Studies explains that the war, in which 377,000 people had died by the end of 2021 according to Al Jazeera, acts a sprawling proxy battle between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and The Wall Street Journal says that although the Houthis have developed the ability to build drones using materials bought locally or sourced from intermediaries elsewhere, their longer-range weapons are either Iranian or based on Iranian designs.
Iran has denied arming the Houthis, while The Washington Post suggests that recent attempts by Iran to repair relations with other regional powers ‘raise questions’ about whether it ‘approved’ of Monday’s attack. Abu Dhabi Drone Attack: Houthi Rebels Target Abu Dhabi Airport in Brutal Exchange](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/luJ3KIuYp0c/mqdefault.jpg)







