Not just Ukraine, a looming oil disaster in Red Sea is keeping Washington on tenterhooks
On Monday, when the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken dialled Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, the two had quite a bit on their plate other than just synchronizing their watches on the situation in Ukraine, Yemen and Iran's nuclear programme.
With a massive 376-metre long oil tanker at risk of leaking, spilling, or exploding at any time in one of the world's vital shipping lanes, both top officials knew time's running out to avoid a catastrophe.
Blinken, as stated by the US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price later, discussed efforts to avert the economic, environmental, and humanitarian threats posed by the Safer oil tanker in the Red Sea region.
The Safer, a rapidly decaying and unstable supertanker, threatens to spill more than 1 million barrels of oil into the Red Sea, devastating the coast, destroying livelihoods, depleting fisheries and potentially disrupting traffic through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
Constructed in 1976 as an oil tanker, Safer was converted to a Floating Storage and Offloading (FSO) facility a decade later.
Comments
Post a Comment