{"id":33687,"date":"2023-05-04T19:41:20","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T19:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/u-n-conference-seeks-final\/"},"modified":"2023-05-04T19:47:38","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T19:47:38","slug":"un-fails-to-raise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/un-fails-to-raise\/","title":{"rendered":"UN fails to raise enough money for Yemen oil tanker operation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Lisa Barrington<\/p>\n<p>DUBAI (Reuters) &#8211;     The United Nations on Thursday fell far short of raising the money it needs for an operation to salvage 1.1 million barrels of oil from a decaying vessel moored off Yemen&#8217;s coast and avert an environmental disaster. <\/p>\n<p>U.N. officials have been warning for years that the Red Sea and Yemen&#8217;s coastline was at risk as the Safer tanker could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.<\/p>\n<p>The war in Yemen suspended maintenance operations on the Safer in 2015. The U.N. has warned its structural integrity has significantly deteriorated and it is at risk of exploding.<\/p>\n<p>Deputy U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq said the U.N. was confident a salvage operation could begin by the end of May.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have available internal financial mechanisms if there are still gaps. That would, of course, need to be replenished by donors,&#8221; Haq said. <\/p>\n<p>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 transfer it to a tanker, the Nautica, the U.N. bought for $55 million. <\/p>\n<p>Around $99 million has been raised from governments, private donors and crowdfunding. A U.N. event co-hosted by Britain and the Netherlands on Thursday hoped to raise the remaining $29 million needed for the emergency phase, but Haq said only $5.6 million was pledged.<\/p>\n<p>An additional $19 million was required for a critical second phase, Haq said. The Nautica was procured by the U.N. in March and set sail from China in early April. <\/p>\n<p>The salvage operation cannot be paid for by the sale of the oil because it is not clear who owns it, the U.N. has said.<\/p>\n<p>Yemen has been mired in conflict since the Iran-aligned Houthi group ousted the government from the capital Sanaa in late 2014. A Saudi Arabia-led military coalition intervened in 2015 aiming to restore the government.<\/p>\n<p>Peace initiatives have seen increased momentum since Riyadh and Tehran in March agreed to restore diplomatic ties severed in 2016.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Lisa Barrington; additional reporting by Reyam Mukhashaf and Michelle Nichols; editing by Christina Fincher; editing by Grant McCool)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/un-fails-to-raise\/united-nations-in-new-york-city\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportTopNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ4306W-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ4306W-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Lisa Barrington DUBAI (Reuters) &#8211; The United Nations on Thursday fell far short of raising the money it needs for an operation to salvage 1.1 million barrels of oil from a decaying vessel moored off Yemen&#8217;s coast and avert an environmental disaster. U.N. officials have been warning for years that the Red Sea and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":33688,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1221],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-33687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-top-news","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportTopNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ4306W-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33687"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34769,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33687\/revisions\/34769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}