The official UN coordinator for Yemen says that ‘a ship is going to Yemen to pump oil from the dilapidated oil tanker Safar.’

According to Arab News, the United Nations Resident Coordinator for Yemen, David Gresley, wrote in his tweet on Saturday that the Nautica ship departed from Djibouti at 9:45 am this morning to the Red Sea coast of Yemen to pick up a rusty tanker. can produce a million barrels of oil. I am excited for the start of the oil transfer next week.’

After years of resistance, the Iran-backed Houthis have finally allowed international engineers to inspect and operate the ship to salvage it.

Since the war in Yemen began in 2015, the 47-year-old Safar has seen little or no maintenance. Now its condition has deteriorated to such an extent that experts have expressed the fear of its explosion.

Environmentalists and authorities have warned that if the ship’s cargo were to spill into the sea, there could be a massive environmental disaster.

The oil tanker Safar, carrying more than 11 million barrels of oil, was abandoned near Yemen’s western coastal city of Hodeidah in 2015.

According to Arab News, after the Houthis took control of Hodeidah, international marine engineers left Yemen.

The Yemeni government has been accusing the Houthi rebels of using the rusted oil tanker as a bargaining chip and seeking concessions from the international community, the Arab League.

The Houthi rebels have previously refused to allow international experts to board the ship to assess the damage.

The United Nations has launched a campaign to raise $144 million to secure the operation to deal with threats to the ‘FSO Safar’ oil tanker anchored in Yemen.

The decaying FSO Safar tanker, also known as the ‘Time Bomb’, contained 48 million gallons of oil.