A possible oil leak in the Red Sea adds to Yemen’s crises

FOR FIVE years the Safer, a tanker, has been slowly corroding in the Red Sea, a time-bomb waiting to go off. Or perhaps it already has. Built in 1976, sent to Yemen in 1988, it has served ever since as a floating storage unit and export terminal. It sits off the coast of Ras Issa at the terminus of a 430km oil pipeline (see map). Since 2015 the ship and its cargo, more than 1.1m barrels of oil, have been in the hands of the Houthis, a Shia rebel group fighting a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. On September 24th the Saudi ambassador to the United Nations warned that an “oil slick” had been spotted 50km west of the vessel.