The Ship That Became a Bomb (newyorker.com) 67
Stranded in Yemen's war zone, a decaying supertanker has more than a million barrels of oil aboard. If -- or when -- it explodes or sinks, thousands may die. From a report: Soon, a vast, decrepit oil tanker in the Red Sea will likely sink, catch fire, or explode. The vessel, the F.S.O. Safer -- pronounced "Saffer" -- is named for a patch of desert near the city of Marib, in central Yemen, where the country's first reserves of crude oil were discovered. In 1987, the Safer was redesigned as a floating storage-and-off-loading facility, or F.S.O., becoming the terminus of a pipeline that began at the Marib oil fields and proceeded westward, across mountains and five miles of seafloor. The ship has been moored there ever since, and recently it has degraded to the verge of collapse. More than a million barrels of oil are currently stored in its tanks. The Exxon Valdez spilled about a quarter of that volume when it ran aground in Alaska, in 1989.
The Safer's problems are manifold and intertwined. It is forty-five years old -- ancient for an oil tanker. Its age would not matter so much were it being maintained properly, but it is not. In 2014, members of one of Yemen's powerful clans, the Houthis, launched a successful coup, presaging a brutal conflict that continues to this day. Before the war, the Yemeni state-run firm that owns the ship -- the Safer Exploration & Production Operations Company, or sepoc -- spent some twenty million dollars a year taking care of the vessel. Now the company can afford to make only the most rudimentary emergency repairs. More than fifty people worked on the Safer before the war; seven remain. This skeleton crew, which operates with scant provisions and no air-conditioning or ventilation below deck -- interior temperatures on the ship frequently surpass a hundred and twenty degrees -- is monitored by soldiers from the Houthi militia, which now occupies the territory where the Safer is situated. The Houthi leadership has obstructed efforts by foreign entities to inspect the ship or to siphon its oil. The risk of a disaster increases every day.
A vessel without power is known as a dead ship. The Safer died in 2017, when its steam boilers ran out of fuel. A boiler is a tanker's heart, because it generates the power and the steam needed to run vital systems. Two diesel generators on deck now provide electricity for basic needs, such as laptop charging. But crucial processes driven by the boiler system have ceased -- most notably, "inerting," in which inert gases are pumped into the tanks where the crude is stored, to neutralize flammable hydrocarbons that rise off the oil. Before inerting became a commonplace safety measure, in the nineteen-seventies, tankers blew up surprisingly often, and with lethal consequences: in December, 1969, three of them exploded within seventeen days, killing four men. Since the boilers on the Safer stopped working, the ship has been a tinderbox, vulnerable to a static-electric spark, a discharged weapon, a tossed cigarette butt. [...] The Safer is not sinking. It is not on fire. It has not exploded. It is not leaking oil. Yet the crew of the ship, and every informed observer, expects disaster to occur soon. But how soon? A year? Six months? Two weeks? Tomorrow? In May, Ahmed Kulaib, the former executive at sepoc, told me that "it could be after five minutes."
The Safer's problems are manifold and intertwined. It is forty-five years old -- ancient for an oil tanker. Its age would not matter so much were it being maintained properly, but it is not. In 2014, members of one of Yemen's powerful clans, the Houthis, launched a successful coup, presaging a brutal conflict that continues to this day. Before the war, the Yemeni state-run firm that owns the ship -- the Safer Exploration & Production Operations Company, or sepoc -- spent some twenty million dollars a year taking care of the vessel. Now the company can afford to make only the most rudimentary emergency repairs. More than fifty people worked on the Safer before the war; seven remain. This skeleton crew, which operates with scant provisions and no air-conditioning or ventilation below deck -- interior temperatures on the ship frequently surpass a hundred and twenty degrees -- is monitored by soldiers from the Houthi militia, which now occupies the territory where the Safer is situated. The Houthi leadership has obstructed efforts by foreign entities to inspect the ship or to siphon its oil. The risk of a disaster increases every day.
A vessel without power is known as a dead ship. The Safer died in 2017, when its steam boilers ran out of fuel. A boiler is a tanker's heart, because it generates the power and the steam needed to run vital systems. Two diesel generators on deck now provide electricity for basic needs, such as laptop charging. But crucial processes driven by the boiler system have ceased -- most notably, "inerting," in which inert gases are pumped into the tanks where the crude is stored, to neutralize flammable hydrocarbons that rise off the oil. Before inerting became a commonplace safety measure, in the nineteen-seventies, tankers blew up surprisingly often, and with lethal consequences: in December, 1969, three of them exploded within seventeen days, killing four men. Since the boilers on the Safer stopped working, the ship has been a tinderbox, vulnerable to a static-electric spark, a discharged weapon, a tossed cigarette butt. [...] The Safer is not sinking. It is not on fire. It has not exploded. It is not leaking oil. Yet the crew of the ship, and every informed observer, expects disaster to occur soon. But how soon? A year? Six months? Two weeks? Tomorrow? In May, Ahmed Kulaib, the former executive at sepoc, told me that "it could be after five minutes."
The non-military proposal came from Iran (Score:4, Interesting)
It's interesting that the non-military proposal came from Iran.
Re:The non-military proposal came from Iran (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The non-military proposal came from Iran (Score:4, Insightful)
It is in everyone's interests, and I literally mean everyone's, to prevent the Safer from spilling oil into the Bab el-Mandeb. If it's not already too late to do so.
Which doesn't necessarily mean it will get solved, one of the more critical quotes from the article:
But the Houthis were looking from the other end of the telescope: the Safer crisis gave them leverage in broader negotiations concerning the war.
Everyone agreeing it's necessary just ensures it has value, which means that gatekeepers will demand something in exchange.
Same thing is happening in the US right now with the Debt Ceiling. Everyone agrees that it needs to be raised, but that just means that it's a valuable bargaining chip for someone.
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The Houthis get their money and weapons from Iran. If Iran wants to solve the problem, the Houthis will comply.
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Iran has offered to send equipment to offload the oil. Iran is the obvious choice to do this since they have the trust of the Houthis.
The Houthis are Iranian allies in Iran's proxy war with Saudi Arabi. The Houthis are winning the war and will likely govern Yemen or at least much of the northern areas.
It is not in Iran's interest to see the oil spill into the sea and ruin territory they may soon wholly control.
Re: The non-military proposal came from Iran (Score:1)
So did the military ones that are occupying the zone. Houthis are the Iranian proxy in Yemen.
So, not interesting, just an expansion of the Islamic State.
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The Islamic State people are Salafis/Wahhabis, radical fundamentalists of the Sunni sect. Salafism/Wahhabism is based in Saudi Arabia. Maybe not all in Saudi Arabia are Salafis/Wahhabis, but enough in the royal family to finance Al Qaida and probably Islamic State (which is why alliances with Saudi Arabia are problematic at best). They (and Islamic State by extension) are absolutely opposed to Shia Muslims which is the religion in Iran, and the main reason both countries are antagonistic to each other (sin
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You are taking the term too particularly. Iran's efforts to expand are due to religion. They want a single Islamic state, ruled by Iran. ISIS is a different group that happens to have the Islamic and State in its name.
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Fair.
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Well, they are indeed both radicals, they both have the same goal and Iran is not shy of providing support for their Sunni friends. Iran has notably provided support to both ISIS in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan, they even tolerated Taliban leaders living in their country after they were driven out of Afghanistan.
Basically Sunni and Shiite are like Protestants and Catholics in the Middle Ages, they'll fight each other to the death, but they can both agree to live together (eg. Edict of Nantes) and
Mother of all Shipwrecks (Score:2)
This is a horrible problem, but the area under threat is a war zone that needs to be cleaned out. I wonder, is this ship in the perfect position to end the war?
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It would be nice if we could turn Iran and the Saudi peninsula into a glass covered parking lot. It would end pretty much all of the problems in the rest of the middle east.
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Not sure how that works... there's too much heat there so wouldn't the glass melt?
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Some observers also believe that the Houthis have laid mines in the waters around the Safer. Many coastal regions under Houthi control have been booby-trapped this way. If explosives indeed surround the ship, nobody knows their exact locations. According to sources in Ras Issa, the port closest to the ship, the Houthi officer responsible for laying mines in the area was killed.
You were saying?
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A DIVING BELL? (Score:2)
Please study how tankers are constructed and defuelled before babbling stupidly.
A plan? (Score:2)
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It's more challenging than that, the very long article states it has more value as leverage, than the oil on board. The current forces in control of the region what the oil, and the ship fully restored, which is effectively impossible. As a stalling tactic (all too often see in civil wars) one side "agrees" to something, in this case inspections to see how bad off the Safer is, then at the last minute, attaches unreasonable demands, or simply calls off the agreement based on ill-defined reasons.
Meanwhile th
Re:A plan? (Score:5, Funny)
slowly tow it out of there
Tow it out beyond the environment [youtube.com].
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Does US knows this? (Score:1)
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More than a million barrels of oil are currently stored in its tanks.
The US produces more than 11.2 million barrels of crude oil a day[1], or more than 4 billion barrels per year. In other words, the US knows about the oil in the ship and they really don't give a... ship.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs... [eia.gov]
It's not a US problem (Score:3)
The world does not revolve around the US and distant ecological disasters affecting clusters of enemy countries are not necessarily strategic problems for those insulated by thousands of miles of ocean.
That's why this barely made the news. The New Yorker discovered it quite late.
The locals refuse to cooperate to solve the problem because they're far too backward and vicious to care. If it explodes the fire will burn out shortly and trade will resume if it's affected at all. The locals will have fewer resour
This is a local problem (Score:2, Insightful)
If a bunch of militants want to play brinkmanship games let them. If the blows up and people die and their environment is wrecked so be it. It is their responsibility to take care of their issues the correct way. If they do it the incorrect way they deserve the consequences. Accommodating this lunacy and bribing them will only encourage more of the same.
Re:This is a local problem (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a local problem. A dozen countries face the Red Sea, and the marine biology of a huge stretch of the Red Sea would be nuked.
It's also the entrance to the Suez Canal. 250 kt of oil burning is going to wreak havoc with the world's sea traffic again.
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Pre-world war II the US had it's isolationists. Seems they're making a comeback with "it's not OUR problem".
Fires are easily sailed around. (Score:3)
A fire would be a brief interruption at most and the fate of Islamist hellholes should not concern civilizations they wish to destroy. There are no secular democracies in the region in case anyone missed it.
The marine biology of that region is a regional issue but nothing good has or ever will come of that region except petroleum.
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No secular democracies? Really? Are you ignorant, a bigot, or both?
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The Safer threatens not only the ecosystems of the Red Sea but also the lives of millions of people. A major spill would close a busy shipping lane. Not long ago, a British company, Riskaware, worked with two nonprofits, acaps and Satellite Applications Catapult, to generate projections for the U.K. government outlining possible outcomes of a disaster on the Safer, allowing for seasonal variations in Red Sea currents and wind patterns. In the worst forecasts, a large volume of oil would reach the Bab el-Mandeb Strait—the pinch point between Djibouti, on the African mainland, and Yemen. Every year, enough cargo passes through the strait to account for some ten per cent of the world’s trade. The insurer Allianz estimated that when the container ship Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week, this past March, the incident cost about a billion dollars a day. Ships rarely traverse oil-contaminated waters, especially when a cleanup is in progress, and their insurance can be imperiled if they do. A spill from the Safer could take months to clear, imposing a toll of tens of billions of dollars on the shipping business and the industries it services. acaps estimated that the cleanup alone could cost twenty billion dollars.
I think you'll find it'll be a lot more than the locals that would suffer. When humanity linked all nations together they tied their fates and fortunes as well. There is no longer a "local" problem, be it oil spill or global pandemic.
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I think you'll find it'll be a lot more than the locals that would suffer. When humanity linked all nations together they tied their fates and fortunes as well.
If other countries think the rebels are endangering the world, they can use diplomacy to try to get them to stop. If that fails, they can bomb the rebels until they allow the ship to be properly cleaned up. (Optionally declaring war first, if they think the rebels are a legitimate government, but they probably don't.) . That's what you do when another country is doing something that's a danger to your country.
If it's not serious enough a problem to do that, it's a local problem. (Maybe with an exceptio
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The countries around it are all Jihadist.
Civilization is better off when religionists kill each other then starve the survivors. Nothing the region produces is of value except petroleum. Let Allah save them.
Trade can either adapt by bypassing Suez, or sail through the slick which is not a physical barrier to passage.
Pronounced Saffer lol (Score:1)
Thanks for that handy key, certainly doesn't clear up the pronunciation unless you are culturally familiar.
That's not a bomb (Score:3)
In the sense that ok, the vapours will explode blowing the hatches off but the crude will just burn. Probably for weeks. However the SS Richard Montgomery on the Thames estuary in England which sank on a sandbank in WW2 contains 1.4K tons of high explosive which if it went off would probably wipe out the nearby town of Sheerness which is only 1.5 miles away.
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Would 1.4 kilotons REALLY destroy Sheerness, though?
According to the map at https://www.shipwreckworld.com... [shipwreckworld.com], it looks like the wreck is ~2.5km away from Sheerness (or, as you pointed out, ~1.5 miles).
According to the nuclear bomb simulator at https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nuk... [nuclearsecrecy.com] , a 1.4kt surface-burst explosion (obviously, the Montgomery isn't a nuclear bomb, so radiation is a non-issue) would only cause 1psi overpressure at 1.32km.
The blast would probably be enough to cause broken glass and laceration wou
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Duh the problem is Montgomery would not be a surface bast. It is a sunken ship you nit wit. Consequently it would be a sub surface bast in a highly movable medium called water. Now a large wall of water heading towards Sheerness is going to cause a *LOT* of problems that some plastic film over your windows is not going to fix.
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As was said, its underwater, so it will push on water, not air. What would be the effect of a 1.4KT subsurface blast underwater? Would it cause a tsunami like wave? and wipe the town off the face of the earth?
Aaron Z
Re: That's not a bomb (Score:3)
The blast energy would take the path of least resistance... mostly, throwing water up into the air.
Even if it sent a wave towards the town, there's a HUGE difference between the volume of water involved with an oceanic tsunami, vs a relatively shallow (compared to the ocean beyond the continental shelf) river.
Some of the heat energy would probably get "soaked up" by turning water into steam, which would take time to re-condense back into water droplets, thus spreading the energy out over a longer period of
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
An interesting case study of what might happen. Water level explosion of 2.8kt destroyed our severely damaged all buildings in a 1.6km radius.
The harbor floor under the surface explosion was temporarily exposed and the inrush produced a 20m tsunami.
Also: "only" 1psi on the front of my house would be hitting it with ~29tons of force. But that wave would be broken up by all the things between the front and any other houses/buildings.
I'm not arguing either way on the destructio
Re: That's not a bomb (Score:2)
I suspect the buildings in 1917 Halifax were mostly wood-framed, which probably made a big difference.
Consider tornadoes. Britain & Florida actually have more tornadoes per urban square mile per year than Oklakoma & Kansas... but you rarely hear about them, because they don't do much damage. Building construction is a big reason why.
An EF1 tornado is basically 15 seconds of a category 3 hurricane. A little baby EF1 tornado that could flatten a neighborhood of Dallas McMansions would barely make a de
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Re: That's not a bomb (Score:2)
Or, after risk-analysis, they determined the risk of death/injury to townspeople & tourists is a lot less than the risk of death/injury to a cleanup crew (whose lives & safety matter, too).
Sometime in the future, they'll use robots to clean it up in a way that minimizes risk to residents and marine traffic along the Thames.
It won't explode (Score:2)
It's raw oil or Diesel, it can't explode, it's not gasoline.
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there are dissolved volatiles in crude oil that can evaporate and collect in a sealed compartment over time.
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It's raw oil or Diesel, it can't explode, it's not gasoline.
I can assure you, it will explode. As the article talks about explosions used to be common. They used to use water to get the oil off the sides of the tankers. The water would cause a static discharge and then you'd have a big fire. I know, sounds strange. I knew people that used to do it in Baltimore. The solution was to pump exhaust gasses into the hold as the oil was taken out. No oxygen, no problems.
Sanctions (Score:2)
Stalemate (Score:2)
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The Houthis caused this problem. They caused all of Yemen's current problems.
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The Saudis refuse to accept the new regime because the new regime is offering Iran the opportunity to launch attacks against Saudi oil fields from Yemeni soil. Why would they accept the Houthis?
The world was better off with Yemen's "corrupt government". The Houthis are nothing but puppets of Iran.
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Old news - I submitted this in June: (Score:3)
"Single-hulled oil tankers fell out of favor because they increase oil spill risk. FSO Safer, an unmaintained single hull tanker which should have been scrapped long ago threatens an ecologically catastrophic oil spill and destruction of their local fishing industry, but Houthi rebels who control the area refuse to permit the UN to take action. This bargaining chip could backfire badly."
https://news.mongabay.com/2021... [mongabay.com]
Deadmanâ(TM)s switch (Score:3)
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Inspired by Saddam Hussein and his scorched earth policies. The textbook definition of people who want to see the world burn...literally.
I little bit dramatic saying it "may" explode (Score:1)
I little bit dramatic saying it "may" explode, a major environmental disaster sure, a major fire ball possibly, but highly unlikely to explode.