Ecological hazard in the Red Sea

A serious ecological danger is looming over the Red Sea, the gulf of the Indian Ocean that separates Asia and Africa, which bathes the coasts of several countries and is strategically exceptionally situated. Its waters, among the warmest in the world, wash the coasts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti and northern Israel. It is a sea with many tourist attractions, from its blue waters that do not respond at all to its name. On its slopes are tourist cities like Eilat in Israel and Akaba in Jordan, which are very visited.

Another attraction is the sea bed that offers visitors despite the obstacles that in some cases offer their conflicting boundaries in an area with great biblical traditions - the passage of the Strait of Moses and his followers fleeing to Egypt - and frequent tensions and warlike confrontations. Its straits, particularly that of Bab el Mandel in the Gulf of Aden, are of exceptional strategic value.

But at present, despite being bathed in conflict, the threat it faces is a major ecological disaster. It is the Yemeni oil tanker that remains abandoned with a cargo of 1.14 barrels of oil in the area controlled by the Hutus since 2015. The rebels who keep Yemen divided and control that area have no capacity to take care of it, not even to try to keep it in good condition.

After such a long time, the Safer has been suffering from serious deterioration and in the last few weeks its engine rooms have started to fill up with water. The threat has begun to spread. A spill of the oil on board is a danger to the more than 1.5 million people who make their living from fishing. So far, foreign offers for technicians to assess their situation and possibilities of unloading it have been prevented by the Hutus themselves.

The seriousness of the danger has reached the hands of the United Nations, which held an extraordinary meeting of the Security Council on Wednesday to try to avert the anticipated disaster. The ship served as a crude oil storage facility from which other passing ships were pumped out. To complicate matters further, the cargo about to spill is claimed both by the legitimate government of Yemen protected by Saudi Arabia and by its enemies the Hutus, supported by the Iranians, who are fighting to remove it from power.

Discussions at the UN that initially seemed a minor issue were aggravated when a scientific report was released on the evils to the sea and its shores that would result from the oil spill with its consequent losses to fisheries and people, in a society already mired in poverty, a situation aggravated by the effects of war. In the end, the Hutus were able to obtain a permit so that international technicians could reach the ship and evaluate the alternatives that exist to prevent the environmental disaster.