Can the world stop a massive oil spill in the middle of a war zone?

Since it was attacked by Houthi rebels in Yemen three weeks ago, a tanker carrying roughly 1 million barrels of crude oil has been immobilized and on fire in the Red Sea. The MV Sounion is still intact, but may not be for long, and should it sink it could lead to one of the largest oil spills in history, nearly four times bigger than the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989. This would have massive environmental and economic impacts on a region already beleaguered by war, and imperil the livelihoods and safe drinking water of millions of people. Efforts will likely soon be underway to salvage the vessel, but it’s a high-risk operation in an active conflict zone, and success is far from guaranteed.

“This is a cataclysmic disaster waiting to happen, and I don’t think everybody involved fully understands either the challenge of it, or the implications if that challenge is not met,” Ian Ralby, CEO of the maritime security firm Consilium, told Vox. “We’re staring down the barrel of an intergenerational problem that is really more consequential than pretty much any other oil spill has been.”

The Greek-flagged tanker Sounion, which had been carrying crude oil from Iraq to Greece, was first attacked on August 21 by Yemeni Houthi rebels firing small arms and projectiles, as well as an unmanned surface vessel. The Houthis, who have been attacking shipping in the Red Sea since near the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, claim they fired on the ship because its owner, the Greek company Delta Tankers, “has ties” to Israel and has other vessels that have called at Israeli ports. Two other ships owned by Delta Tankers were attacked in August.

The ship’s crew of 23 Filipinos and two Russians as well as four private security guards were rescued by a French destroyer the day after the attack, but the Sounion itself is immobilized, currently anchored between the coasts of Eritrea and Yemen. On August 27, Pentagon Spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters that an initial attempt to salvage the ship had been abandoned after the salvagers were “warned away by the Houthis.”

On August 29, the Houthis placed and detonated explosives on the deck of the ship, releasing a video of themselves carrying out the operation. Shortly after that, the Houthis’ main international patron, Iran, said that the group would allow a salvage operation to take place. One of the Houthi senior leaders, Mohammed al-Houthi, has said that they would allow the rescue to take place in order to prevent environmental damage, but that the US and United Kingdom would be responsible for any oil that spilled due to their support for Israel.

The situation appeared to be on its way to a resolution in early September, when an operation involving tugboats protected by European naval vessels was launched to salvage the Sounion. But on September 3, Operation Aspides, the EU naval operation in the region, said in a statement that “the private companies responsible for the salvage operation have concluded that the conditions were not met to conduct the towing operation and that it was not safe to proceed. Alternative solutions are now being explored by the private companies.”

In a statement provided to Vox, the tanker’s owner, Delta Tankers, said that it is “doing everything it can to move the vessel (and cargo). For security reasons, we are not in a position to comment further.” The EU’s Operation Aspides did not respond to a request for comment. As of now, the US military does not appear to be involved in efforts to rescue the ship, with Deputy Spokesperson Sabrina Singh telling reporters in a September 5 briefing, “The US Navy is standing by to assist, but right now I’m told that this is being done through private means.”

The trade publication Maritime Executive has reported that Greece — the ship’s flag state — has been in talks with Saudi Arabia over options, which could include towing it to a Saudi port or an effort to transfer oil to another ship before it sinks. On September 12, Reuters reported that another salvage operation would begin soon. But there’s no guarantee the Houthis wouldn’t strike again, and experts say the sort of companies that specialize in these types of operations are unaccustomed to doing so in the middle of a war zone.

“Even though the Houthis are giving a green light to tug this boat, they’re still attacking ships around it,” Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemeni security analyst with the consultancy Navanti Group, told Vox. “So insurance companies are not comfortable with it, salvage companies are not comfortable with it. There’s just no trust between the international community and the Houthis.”

With the ship still burning, there may not be much time left. Like nearly all tankers built since the Exxon Valdez disaster, the Sounion is double-hulled and will not leak easily, and its oil tanks still seem to be intact. But depending on the amount of damage it has already sustained, how much oxygen the oil cargo has been exposed to, and the intensity of the fire, it’s likely only a matter of time.

“We don’t know how long that vessel has. If the fires aren’t put out, it will eventually sink,” said Ralby.

If the Sounion’s cargo spills, it could potentially rank among the world’s worst environmental disasters. Julien Jreissati, Greenpeace’s Middle East North Africa program director, told Vox that because the Red Sea is a mostly closed body of water — with the Suez Canal to the north and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait to the south — it doesn’t have the same level of circulation and dilution as open ocean, making the oil more likely to stick in place.

“You cannot clean an oil spill,” Jreissati said. “You can try to contain it and mitigate it, but you will have impact and remnants for decades.” The difficulties involved in such an operation would be exponentially greater in an active combat zone.

“The Red Sea is truly a natural treasure,” Jreissati said. “It has species of corals which are among the most resilient to climate change and bleaching, and therefore are particularly precious, because they could help provide the solution for corals all over the world.”

And the impact wouldn’t only be felt underwater. A major oil spill could devastate the region’s fisheries, a key component of economies on both sides of the sea. (Prior to the outbreak of civil war in 2015, fish were Yemen’s second-largest export after oil and gas.) An oil spill could also block access to ports for impoverished Yemen’s much-need humanitarian aid.

It could also cause an even greater disruption to shipping through the Red Sea, which is already down nearly two-thirds due to the Houthi attacks, raising the costs of shipping and causing further reverberations throughout the global supply chain.

Much also depends on when a spill would take place. Currently, the surface current in the Red Sea is mainly flowing south toward the Indian Ocean. In October it will switch and begin flowing north, toward Saudi Arabia and Egypt. One major concern is that an oil spill could contaminate the coastal desalination plants that tens of millions of people in countries bordering the Red Sea, rely on for fresh water.

A cruel irony of this situation is that the Red Sea region only recently escaped a similar disaster. The FSO Safer, a 1970s-era tanker that had been converted by the Yemeni government into an offshore oil platform, is moored off the central Yemeni city of al-Hudaydah, unmaintained and rapidly corroding. In its hold were over a million barrels of oil, roughly the same amount as at the Sounion.

Around 2021, it became clear that the ship was at risk of sinking or exploding. A risk assessment at the time estimated that it could affect up to 1.6 million people’s livelihoods, disrupt 50 percent of Yemen’s fisheries, and that the cleanup alone would cost more than $20 billion.

After years of negotiations with the Houthis, a UN-organized operation was finally organized to transfer the oil off the ship. The operation was completed in August 2023, almost exactly a year before the Sounion crisis began. This time around, the international community has far less time to act.

Hopefully there is still time for the private companies and militaries in the region to organize a salvage mission — and for the Houthis to allow it to proceed — before the worst-case scenario takes place. But even if the Sounion itself doesn’t cause the cataclysm, it’s just one reminder of the knock-on risks posed by the nearly year-old conflict in Gaza. Two additional oil tankers were attacked by the Houthis, but not disabled, in early September, even as the Sounion continued to burn.

Then there’s the Rubymar, the first ship sunk by a Houthi attack, back in March. Though carrying only a fraction of the oil of the Sounion, the Rubymar left an 18-mile oil slick in the Red Sea. A much bigger concern is the 22,000 metric tons of fertilizer still in the ship’s hold, which, if released underwater, could potentially cause massive algae blooms that would devastate local species and potentially create oxygen-free “dead zones.” Experts believe the cargo will remain in the Rubymar’s holds for years, but not indefinitely, and the International Maritime Organization, a UN agency, has launched an appeal for funding for a cleanup.

For Greenpeace’s Jreissati, the crisis is a reminder that even under the best of times, the global economy relies on “these big ships traveling across the world the whole time carrying very toxic material. It’s a ticking time bomb.”

It’s also a reminder that the longer the escalating conflict in the Middle East lasts, the greater and more unpredictable the risks grow.