Yemen's HSA pledges $1.2 million to U.N. drive to avert tanker oil spill

FILE PHOTO: The United Nations headquarters building is pictured though a window with the UN logo in the foreground in the Manhattan borough of New York August 15, 2014. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

DUBAI (Reuters) - Yemen's HSA Group on Thursday became the first private entity to pledge funds for a United Nations operation to avoid an oil spill from a tanker stranded off the coast of Yemen, as the U.N. urgently tries to secure an initial requirement of $80 million.

The international organisation, which has so far raised over $60 million, has warned that the Safer, stranded since 2015 off a Red Sea oil terminal, could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster near Alaska.