FSO Safer (pronounced "saffer" /ˈsæfər/)[1] is a floating oil storage and offloading vessel that is moored in the Red Sea north of the Yemeni city of Al Hudaydah.
[6] In March 2015, in the early days of the Yemeni Civil War, Safer fell into the hands of Houthi forces when they took control of the coastline surrounding her mooring.
[6] In the following years, her structural condition deteriorated significantly, leading to the risk of a catastrophic hull breach or explosion of oil vapors that would typically be suppressed by inert gas generated on board.
[9] Following a leak in the cooling system, water entered the machine room, prompting the United Nations Security Council to hold a special meeting about it in July 2020.
[12] On 24 September 2020, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United Nations wrote in a letter that experts had observed that "a pipeline attached to the vessel is suspected to have been separated from the stabilizers holding it to the bottom and is now floating on the surface of the sea.
"[13] In late November, the United Nations and Houthi leadership reached an agreement to allow a UN-led team access to Safer by January 2021 for purposes of inspection and repair.
[20] On 5 March 2022, Mohammed al-Houthi signed an agreement with the United Nations to pump the oil still in the decaying tanker into another ship to prevent a potential natural disaster.
[24][25] In March 2023, in a statement from Achim Steiner, it was announced that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had purchased the Safer, along with a tanker undergoing refit in China to begin the first phase of the operation to remove an estimated 1.14 million barrels of crude oil.