(Reuters) – The United Nations said on Friday it has completed the removal of more than 1 million barrels of oil from a decaying tanker off Yemen’s Red Sea coast, averting a potential environmental disaster that could have cost $20 billion to clean up.
U.N. officials have been warning for years that the tanker – called the Safer – was at risk of exploding and could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska. The war in Yemen saw maintenance operations suspended in 2015.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Ismail Shakil)
