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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

"The Safer, a deteriorating oil tanker containing 1.1 million barrels of oil, has been deserted near the coast of Yemen since 2015..."

WTF? That's tens of millions of dollars worth of oil. Why hasn't someone salvaged her?

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Recommend reading the New Yorker article mentioned in another comment. Makes you appreciate the complexity of the situation and full background story.

It's literally in a warzone and is surrounded by mines

When better to move fast and break things?

Navies have the technology to make this a non issue. U.S. navy could stymie the minefield and tow it to where it can be decommissioned trivially. I wonder what geopolitics at play are preventing this sort of intervention?

The HSV-2 Swift, formerly an original proof-of-concept ship for the U.S. Navy’s Joint High Speed Vessel program, was gutted by explosion and fire when Houthi rebels attacked the ship off Yemen Oct. 1.

Operated by the United Arab Emirates, the 321’x88’x11’ Swift was transiting the Bab Al Mandeb strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden when it was struck at night. Gutted by the attack but still floating, the vessel was moved to Eritrea for salvage.

https://www.workboat.com/bluewater/hsv-2-swift-wrecked-yemen...

Not sure what this adds to the discussion.

If the Houthies want to retain the minefield then they have the a2d2 to keep the minefield.

Wikipedia article has some background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSO_Safer

Location on Google Maps (no satellite view)

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Safer+Oil+Tanker/@15.12456...

Interestingly, the ship itself doesn't appear on any of the "vessel finder" type websites that I can locate, but if you zoom on the same region on vesselfinder.com, there is a green dashed line box in the same region you've linked here - wonder if that's a naval no-go zone or something? Don't see a legend for it.

> Interestingly, the ship itself doesn't appear on any of the "vessel finder" type websites that I can locate,

Vessel finder & al rely on AIS signal sent by vessel. The AIS beacon probably stopped emitting.

I wondered if that would be the case, it would make sense.

According to a YouTube video (Decaying oil tanker may soon cause one of the largest oil spills ever | DW News) [1] it looks like the box is too much to the south and west.

It's an interesting video which provides a bit of context.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0fpv9IzZAY

It’s used as a bargaining chip by the Houthis. They are holding everyone on the Red Sea hostage using an environmental doomsday device.

Wouldn't it be safer to just blow the whole thing up? Burn off the oil?

Not all of it will float or float immediately or hold together well enough to burn effectively. This has been proposed for previous disasters.

Purely theoretical question, would a tactical nuke (e.g. W80 at 150kt) obliterate the ship thoroughly and quickly enough to avoid spreading the oil around?

You mean dump a shipload of liquid oxygen in it and watch the oxyliquit fireworks?

Nuking it would work.

I’m sure there are other reason not to do that.

It's near a place where that amount is just a drop in a bucket.

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