The $140 Million Effort to Defuse an Oil Tanker Ready to Explode (1)

An operation is finally underway to transfer the oil from a stricken tanker off the coast of Yemen that maritime salvage experts have called a “ticking time bomb.”

The decrepit vessel has been lying idle for years with more than a million barrels of crude sitting on it, but it hasn’t been accessible because of Yemen’s civil war. The Houthi rebels that control the region around the ship agreed in September to back a United Nations effort to move its cargo onto another, younger tanker that will remain there instead.

Support crew board the FSO Safer oil tanker on June 12.

Photographer: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

An on-board appraisal found that the 47-year-old FSO Safer, which is owned ...