Saudi foreign ministry welcomes UN announcement of successful Safer tanker mission

Saudi Arabia’s ministry of foreign affairs welcomed on Friday the UN announcement that the transfer of more than one million barrels of oil from the dilapidated Yemeni tanker FSO Safer was successful, Al-Ekhbariya reported.

The operation, which saw 1.14 million barrels of oil taken off the decaying vessel, removed the imminent risk of a spill.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “welcomes the news that the ship-to-ship transfer of oil from the FSO Safer to the Yemen replacement vessel has been safely concluded today, avoiding what could have been a monumental environmental and humanitarian catastrophe,” a statement said.

The foreign ministry reiterated Saudi Arabia’s appreciation of the efforts of Guterres and the UN working team who “worked to harness all efforts to end the problem of the Safer tanker,” the Al-Ekhbariya report added.

Saudi Arabia was one of the first donor countries to provide financial grants for the operation to remove the oil to go ahead through donations via the King Salman Center for Relief and Humanitarian Aid.