Yemen FM on plan to remove oil tanker from coast

The foreign minister for Yemen's internationally recognized government expressed doubt on Sunday that a UN-backed plan could succeed in removing a decrepit oil tanker from off the country's coast.

The large ship has been a looming natural disaster for years. In September, the United Nations said it had reached a pledging goal to raise money to remove 1 million barrels of oil from the rusting oil supertanker, moving closer toward averting an explosion or leak.

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, a spokesman said at the time. The rusting FSO Safer supertanker holds some four times the estimated amount of oil released in the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill that devastated the Alaskan coast. Funding delays and Yemen's seven-year war have stymied international efforts to start addressing the threat.