Rabat, June 19 -- A deteriorating oil tanker, close to Yemen's recently demilitarized Hodeidah port, adds stress to an already tense region threatening to spill more than one million barrels of oil into the Red Sea.

"If the tanker ruptures or explodes, we could see the coastline polluted all along the Red Sea," the Humanitarian Affairs Chief Mark Lowcock told the UN Security Council on Monday.

Lowcock said he is working with Houthi rebel forces to have UN Officials access the tanker, named SAFER, check the situation and find a solution to avoid an environmental disaster.

SAFER was built in 1976 and has been moored north of Hodeidah since 1988 as a Floating Storage and Offloading (FSO) terminal and was used as a point to load exported o...