United Nations launches crowd-funding campaign to prevent oil spill disaster

In order to prevent oil spill disaster in the Red Sea, the United Nations has launched a crowd-funding campaign for an operation intended to prevent an ageing Yemeni oil tanker from unleashing a potential catastrophe.

UN's humanitarian coordinator for Yemen David Gressly told an online press briefing "We hope to raise $5 million by the end of June."

He took to Twitter and wrote, "Today I launched a @UN crowdfunding campaign because we urgently need funds to start the emergency operation before it is too late."

The Yemeni oil tanker, which is decaying and is 45-year-old, was used as a floating storage platform and has not been serviced since the country was plunged into civil war more than seven years ago. 

Last month, the United Nations had warned that the FSO Safer, abandoned off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, is in "imminent" danger of breaking up.

According to a website for the crowd-funding campaign, which has started accepting donations, an operation to transfer its 1.1 million barrels of oil to a different vessel could begin next month.

Neighbouring Saudi Arabia said it would contribute $10 million following a UN pledging conference last month for the oil-transfer operation fell far short of its $80 million target.

After Houthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa the previous year, a Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015.

According to the UN, the Safer contains four times the amount of oil that was spilled by the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, one of the world's worst ecological catastrophes.