A TANKER purchased by the UN for $55m using international donations as part as an operation to avert an environmental crisis in Yemen, is being used by the Houthis as a floating storage facility for Russia-origin oil products.

Lloyd’s List has tracked at least three separate ship-to-ship transfers of Russia-origin cargoes on to the VLCC Yemen (IMO: 9323948) since it was purchased by the UN in 2023 as part of an operation to salvage the oil on board FSO Safer (IMO: 7376472), a 49-year-old floating storage unit that was in danger of sinking.

Both Yemen and the still floating FSO Safer are now under the effective control of the Houthis, the Iran-backed Yemeni militia group responsible for attacking over 100 ships since November 2023.

The shipments of mostly Russia-origin gasoil, at least one of which has since been offloaded and delivered to the Houthi-held port of Ras Isa, have all happened despite repeated objections being made by the UN Development Programme, which retains an advisory oversight role and pays a $450,000 monthly fee for technical services to maintain the vessel.

Yemen (formerly Nautica) was purchased by the UNDP from tanker giant Euronav in 2023 in order to transfer 1.1m barrels of oil from the decaying FSO Safer, which was in danger of sinking and causing an environmental disaster.

Following several years of fundraising, which included over $130m from donors, private companies, and members of the public, ownership of Yemen was transferred to the Safer Exploration Production & Operations Co.

Sepoc is a national oil company, controlled by Yemen’s internationally recognised government.

Both Yemen and FSO Safer, however, remain under the control of the Houthis — a designated terrorist group in both the US and UAE.

In a statement to Lloyd’s List, a spokesperson for UNDP, which has been overseeing the FSO Safer salvage operation on behalf of the UN, said that it was Sepoc that had arranged “a number of transfers of diesel fuel oil to and from Yemen”.

“As a matter of due diligence in our advisory capacity, on each occasion UNDP has objected strongly to Sepoc, the owner of the vessel, both verbally and in writing and requested that they be ceased immediately,” the agency said, adding that it has “no knowledge of the origins or destinations of the vessels involved in these transfers”.

The UNDP emphasised that the FSO Safer salvage operation “prevented a potential oil spill that would have been a massive ecological, humanitarian, and economic catastrophe”. 

While the urgency of removing the oil from FSO Safer is not disputed, the situation has played out much to the benefit of the Houthis, who have essentially been gifted a storage facility bought with, and maintained with, donor money and UNDP funds. 

Ian Ralby, chief executive of consultancy IR Consilium and one of the leading voices that raised the alarm about the decrepit FSO Safer, said that while removing the oil from the tanker was critical to avoid a disastrous oil spill, the operation was “poorly thought through”.

“What essentially happened was that the UN appealed to millions of people around the world to fundraise for, essentially a gift of a facility to the Houthis,” Ralby told Lloyd’s List.

“While the operation to remove the oil from FSO Safer was needed, the result is that even school children in the US raised money at bake sales to help essentially fund the Houthis in averting sanctions and working more closely with the likes of Russia and Iran.”

Sepoc has strenuously denied the UNDP’s account, calling it “categorically untrue”. Legal representatives for Sepoc stressed that the company has not been involved with the FSO Safer nor the Yemen since 2023, and with both vessels under Houthi control, only they could have arranged the transfers. Moreover, the UNDP never objected the transfers to Sepoc, the representatives said, but rather contacted the Houthis.

“Sepoc understands that the UNDP actually objected to the Houthis regarding these transfers. As the UNDP is fully aware, Sepoc is wholly owned by the legitimate and internationally recognised Government of Yemen,” Sepoc’s lawyers told Lloyd’s List in August.

“It is unacceptable for the UNDP to conflate Sepoc and the Houthis in this manner.”

A UNDP spokesperson told Lloyd’s List in response that it “has been in contact” with Sepoc and has “clarified the matter”.

From a pending environmental crisis to a Houthi economic win

While the 2023 operation to remove the 1.1m barrels of oil from the FSO Safer and transfer the cargo to the Yemen was a success, the remaining parts of the operation, which included removal of other residual oils from FSO Safer and its ultimate scrapping, were suspended as costs mounted and security risks intensified as the Houthis began attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea in November 2023.

Meanwhile, the Houthis leveraged the spectre of an environmental disaster to make a deal that not only averted a catastrophe on their shores but turned a pending environmental crisis in the Red Sea into a political crisis for the international community and an economic success for themselves, with the VLCC Yemen providing them with critical storage capacity — at little to no financial cost.

While Sepoc owns Yemen, it is the UNDP that is fronting the vessel’s operating costs. The agency said it is paying $450,000 per month for “advisory services”, which include “salaries of the crew, provisions, insurances and oversight”.

The UN’s dedicated web page for the operation says that by mid-January 2024, “generous donors, private companies, and members of the public had contributed $129m and pledged an additional $4m of the $144m that was needed to implement the emergency phase of the project”.

The donor group behind the operation includes the Netherlands, German, US, Saudi Arabia, among others.