FSO Safer: Risks to Yemen - Sea Ports
FSO Safer: Risks to Yemen - Sea Ports
If the Safer explodes or sinks, it will have huge negative impacts on some of Yemen's key sea ports.
[NOTE: The risks that the F.S.O. Safer poses can broadly be categorised into (i) Yemen’s humanitarian situation, (ii) general environmental, (iii) world trade, and (iv) the wider region.
This series of posts will be based on a wide variety of publicly available sources. However, a special shout out - in terms of the structure and content it provides - is the Greenpeace briefing paper “FSO Safer: A Shipwreck In Slow Motion”, which in turn draws a lot on an article in Nature by Benjamin Q. Huynh et al called “Public health impacts of an imminent Red Sea oil spill.”]
Yemen’s Ports
Yemen’s ports are essential to the importation of food and fuel into Yemen. According to Huynh et al:
90% of Yemen’s food supply comes via its ports
97% of its fuel is through its ports, mainly in the south/Gulf of Aden (Aden, Mukalla)
68% of aid comes via the north/Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif
While Yemen has several sea and river ports, some including container terminal facilities, the two main ports used for receiving valuable food and fuel supplies are:
Port of Aden
This is Yemen’s main port, situated in a large natural harbour in the Gulf of Aden and controlled by the internationally recognised Government of Yemen.
A 2021 Damage and Capacity Assessment commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) concluded that over US$20 million of investment was required to “both maintain current operations and restore them to pre-war conditions”.
In the first half of 2022 it saw a 42% reduction in food imports compared to the same period in 2021, mainly driven by the impacts of the war in Ukraine, lower humanitarian food donations, as well as financial effects on importers of higher port handling and shipping costs.
Hodeidah
This is the main port situated in the Red Sea and is under control of the Houthis. (The F.S.O. Safer is located off the Ras Isa Marine Terminal about 60 kilometres north of the Port of Hodeidah. Also nearby is the smaller and less developed Port of Salif, also under Houthi control.)
A 2020 Damage and Capacity Assessment commissioned by the UNDP concluded that over US$45 million of investment was required to “both maintain current operations and restore them to pre-war conditions”.
Following the 2018 Stockholm agreement, the next year the UN Mission to support the Hodeidah Agreement (UNMHA) was established to monitor the ceasefire centred around the strategic port, and it has recently been renewed for another year. Unfortunately, tensions have been, and continue to be, constant.
In better news though, the general Yemen ceasefire has seen an increase in food imports via the Red Sea ports of 17% in the first half of 2022 as well as an uptick in fuel imports in the second quarter of 2022 vs. last year.
So in the midst of political tensions and a fragile ceasefire in Yemen, a war in Ukraine having reverberating negative impacts on global food and fuel supplies, and key ports already under financial strain, the last thing now needed is a massive oil spill to disrupt or even see the closure of these ports.
So what impact would an oil spill from F.S.O. Safer have on Yemen’s ports?
Huynh et al did modelling on potential impacts of the Safer spilling its oil cargo vis-à-vis Yemen’s ports and came to the following conclusions:
Simulation modelling using a dataset of historical weather conditions found that most spills tended “to move towards Yemen’s northwest coast”. Observing seasonal variations, summer saw spill movements tending to move towards the “southeast and further along Yemen’s coastline”; in the winter “north along the Red Sea coast”. But uncertainty also showed a “wide range of possible trajectories across the Red Sea, showing the possibility of movement in either direction for both seasons.”
Using the above conclusions (but also noting the possibility it could go the other way):
Winter (which we are now approaching in the region) - the spill would tend to move north along the Red Sea, so impacting Ras Issa, Salif and also (due to its proximity) Hodeidah.
Summer - the spill would move down the coast towards the south of Yemen, which would also bring the Port of Aden into play.
Not all oil remains once spilled (about 51% would evaporate within 24 hours - not without health risks to those nearby), but the 49% would remain a day after. Six days later, thanks to evaporation and various oil spill mitigation interventions, a little under 40% would be left floating. In a few weeks, with the spill spreading and not having been cleaned up, it is expected that passage through the Gulf of Aden would be impeded.
Within two weeks, the spill would have spread to the Hodeidah and Salif ports; within three weeks it could reach as far as the Port of Aden as well as neighbouring countries.
Spilled oil in those ports would see severe interruptions and possible closures, which would devastate the ability of Yemen to receive vital food and fuel. While Sana’a airport has recently seen some commercial flights opened up as a result of the ceasefire, shipping is still the predominant way that essential supplies must reach Yemen due to inherent bulk capacity and relatively lower costs.
With ports closed, shipments will need to go the long and more expensive way around Africa. The ports would also miss out on revenue as a result.
Other impacts for the Red Sea ports:
Fuel - For each month of closure, delivery of ~200,000 metric tons of fuel for Yemen would be impacted (38% of national requirements). Supply and demand kicks in, with expected fuel price hikes as a result. (Huynh et al advised that after ports were closed in late 2017 due to the tightening of the blockade, fuel prices went up an astonishing 72% in Hodeidah the next month.)
Water - Apart from the potential disruption of desalination plants, additional access to running water would be disrupted as fuel is required to power water pumps and trucks. (Huynh et al advised that also in late 2017, eight million people lost access to running water.)
Food - Not only will fish stocks be devastated, food aid would be disrupted for ~ 5.7 million people currently requiring food assistance.
And if it spreads as far as Aden and sees closure there:
~8.4 million people would not receive food aid.
Conclusion
It is great news that funding targets have been received for Stage 1 of the rescue plan, but all cash needs to be received before the operation needs to start. The ideal time for that was around June, and we are now a few months past that. The above is an indication of what could potentially happen. Even if the worse case scenario is averted, the impact will still be huge, for a country that really cannot afford any more setbacks.
In future posts in this series, I will explore further impacts for the people of Yemen, including on:
Water desalination plants
Fishing industry and other local industries
Their health
Their environment