UN: Pledge goal reached for averting oil disaster off Yemen

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United Nations says it has finally reached a yearslong pledging goal to raise money to remove 1 million barrels of oil from a stranded and rusting oil supertanker off Yemen. Monday’s news moves the international community closer toward averting an explosion or leak that could wreak environmental and economic disaster. Russell Geekie, a U.N. spokesman for Yemen operations, cautions that the U.N. still has to persuade all donors to pay up on pledges for the first, $75 million phase of the emergency removal operation to begin. The decaying FSO Safer supertanker holds some four times the estimated amount of oil released in the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.