"UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations has purchased a large tanker to store about 1.1 million barrels of oil that will be transferred from a decaying vessel off Yemen's coast in a bid to avert an environmental disaster, officials said on Thursday.
U.N. officials have been warning for several years that the Red Sea and the coastline of Yemen was at risk as the Safer tanker could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.
But the top U.N. official in Yemen, David Gressly, said no-one had stepped up to donate a tanker and no company was willing to lease a vessel that would be used near a civil war "even though this situation has calmed down considerably."
The United Nations has said the clean-up of a spill could cost $20 billion, but yet it is struggling to raise the $129 million needed to remove the oil from the Safer and pay for the vessel bought from Euronav (EUAV.BR) for $55 million."
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