2023-07-19 05:45:00
When an alarm sounded on a dilapidated oil tanker off Yemen, signaling a leak in the engine room, Hussein Nasser did not hesitate to intervene, counting his hours, to avoid an ecological and humanitarian disaster in the Red Sea .
Off Hodeida in the west of the country, Hussein Nasser and the half-dozen crew members of the FSO Safer made makeshift iron bands to repair a burst pipe, before divers arrived to install a permanent steel plate to prevent sea water from drowning the ship.
“The stress is still there because of the dilapidated state of the ship,” Hussein Nasser, engineer on this ruined supertanker containing more than a million barrels of oil, told AFP.
“The Safer is like a front line and we had to fight, like on a military front line”, continues this fifty-year-old with graying short hair.
A shipwreck or an explosion would indeed have caused a gigantic oil spill, wreaking havoc on fauna and flora, coastal fishing villages, maritime traffic and essential ports for this country already facing one of the worst humanitarian crises. in the world.
The poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen is torn apart by a conflict between the Houthis, Iranian-backed insurgents, and pro-government forces backed by Saudi Arabia.
47 years old, neglected during the more than eight years of war, the FSO Safer finally begins this week to benefit from a complex and expensive rescue operation, overseen by the UN.
First objective: the transfer of oil to a replacement ship, the Nautica, which arrived on Sunday.
forgotten heroes
The FSO Safer is in poor condition, rust and fungus spreading on its red and gray hull, which has shrunk four millimeters in thickness in places.
The Houthis, who control the port of Hodeidah, are quick to praise men like Hussein Nasser as “forgotten heroes”, they say.
“The crew is sometimes made up of only three or five people, whereas there were 72 before the war,” said Idriss Al-Shami, boss of the oil company Safer, appointed by the Houthis.
“They worked in the middle of all these flammable gases, and almost swimming in oil,” lists the manager.
“They worked in dangerous conditions. They managed to repair the ship. And they were not recognized,” he regrets.
Faced with these “forgotten heroes”, the Houthis point the finger at Saudi Arabia and its allies, including the United Arab Emirates, accusing them of having maintained a blockade on the port of Hodeida, thus depriving the FSO Safer of the necessary works.
Yet the Houthis themselves have long been accused of using the fate of Safer as a bargaining chip, blocking UN inspection demands with their demand that oil revenues be given to them to pay salaries. of their officials.
“A few minutes of sleep”
“Any oil tanker needs regular maintenance to ensure its safety,” Ibrahim Al-Moshki, head of Hodeidah’s maritime affairs authority, told AFP.
Repairing leaks below decks is particularly tricky because of the heat and fumes given off from the crude oil, which can pose an explosion hazard.
In the city of Hodeida, the popular fish market would almost certainly have been closed in the event of an oil spill. According to the UN, half a million people work in the fishing industry in the region, 200,000 of them having seen their livelihoods “instantly wiped out”.
“All would have been seriously affected,” insists engineer Hussein Nasser, saluting from afar the fishermen who unload wheelbarrows full of fish.
Fifty years old, he says he is ready for any new mission that the maritime authorities decide to entrust to him. But after years aboard a ship that threatened to sink or explode, he finally dreams of “a few minutes of sleep and rest”.
07/19/2023 05:43:45 – Aboard FSO Safer (Yemen) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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