Sprol

Sixteen years ago, in March 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska’s pristine Prince William Sound. Approximately 258,000 barrels of crude oil were spilled. One barrel of oil contains 42 gallons. Translated, that’s about 11 million gallons of slick, sickening oil.

In 1994, a federal jury ordered Exxon to pay $5 billion in punitive damages to the people so deeply affected by the oil spill. As of October 2005, has a penny of this money been paid? Guess.

No, it has not. The people at the top of Exxon think they’ve done plenty for the region and continue to use stall tactics to avoid paying the $5 billion award, even though this amount is trivial in the pockets of this huge corporation. Record profits don’t matter when you’re trying to avoid paying to clean up something that you’re responsible for.

Did you know that waiting pays? It has been estimated that Exxon has earned millions of dollars strictly in interest from the original figure of $5 billion it was ordered by a judge’s hammer to cough up.

Don’t let Exxon mislead you by their claims of paying a few billion for environmental cleanup and land restoration. Exxon has been reimbursed for the most part by the insurance industry . . . and by American taxpayers. Spill-related tax deductions?

Much of the environment has never recovered, including harbor seals, harlequin ducks, pacific herring, sea otters, certain whales, and other impacted wildlife. The lingering oil from the Exxon Valdez will kill or stunt Alaskan pink salmon for generations to come as well as create permanent genetic damage in various species of fish and other sea mammals. The death count (representing only 10-30% of the total accounted for that died): 4,000 sea otters, 1,000 adult eagles, 345 seals, 500,000 murres, and many, many invertebrates and intertidal creatures.

The towns’ responsibilities to provide food and clothing for their people were also dramatically injured. Clinical depression. Attempted suicide. Domestic violence. Broken families. Chronic psychological stress. All effects of the trauma suffered by self-made residents. $5 billion? A paltry amount when it comes to human suffering and loss of wildlife.

To add more tragedy to travesty, Exxon used 140º F water, sprayed at overly high pressure, to “clean” the shoreline. This action, which was like a poison to the beach and many animals, did more harm than good. The hot water, high-pressure washing removed the nutrients and sediments of the shore that would have aided in the recovery of the ecosystem.

Have you heard about the “secret” agreement in 1991 that Exxon signed with seven seafood processors based in Seattle? These processors lost business because of the Valdez spill, and here’s the deal they struck with the corporate giant: Exxon paid these processors $70 million in exchange for the processors giving Exxon their share of the punitive damages, if the damages were paid. That would have been $745 million—15% of the total $5 billion. Exxon was busted when they claimed this money was given to the processors out of the goodness of the company’s heart. A very blackened heart.

Were you aware that the captain of the Exxon Valdez was reportedly intoxicated when he took the tanker out across Prince William Sound on that cold March night? He had spent the day drinking with members of his crew. Coast Guard tests revealed that Captain Joseph Hazelwood’s blood alcohol level was .241, which is more than six times the legal level under Coast Guard regulations. He put the vessel on automatic pilot, left the bridge, and the rest is dark history. The supertanker struck Bligh Reef, spilling 11 million gallons of oil.

The Aftermath

What happened to Hazelwood? He was acquitted in 1990 of operating the tanker while drunk. Hazelwood was convicted of the misdemeanor offense of illegally discharging oil, and in 1998, the Alaska Appeals Court upheld Hazelwood’s sentence on that charge, and he was fined $50,000.

The Exxon Valdez was renamed as the SeaRiver Mediterranean, and still carried oil around the world, although this tanker was barred from entering Alaskan waters. In 2002, the single-hull tanker was pulled from service.

In 1990, the U.S. introduced and passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (subsequent to the Exxon Valdez oil spill). OPA 90 required new oil tankers to be double hulled and established a phase-out program for single-hull tankers, which rules that these older tankers complete their phase out by 2015. Double hull versus single hull reasoning: If the outer hull is breached, the inner hull will contain the fuel. While this measure has decreased the amount of oil spills, it surely has not eliminated them.

In 1999, many opposed the Exxon/Mobil merger because of Exxon’s failure to pay awarded punitive damages for the Exxon Valdez devastation. Unfortunately, the opposition lost.

In 2001, the Alaskan town of Cordova lost their mayor to suicide, apparently because of the seesaw events within the court system.

Oil Flows Into The Sea

Since the Exxon Valdez disaster, 13 other large oil spills have been caused by a variety of mishaps, not all of which were accidental.

• December 1989—The Canary Islands: Kharg-5, Iranian supertanker explosion. 19 million gallons of oil surged into the Atlantic Ocean.
• June 1990—Galveston, Texas: Explosion and fire on board Mega Borg. 5.1 million gallons of dispersed oil.
• January 1991—Kuwait: During the Persian Gulf War, Iraq purposely released 240-260 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf from tankers 10 miles off the southern coast of Kuwait.
• April 1991—Genoa, Italy: 42 million gallons of oil spilled by Haven in the Genoa port.
• May 1991—Angola: The ABT Summer exploded and spread 15-18 million gallons of oil off the coast of Angola.
• March 1992—Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan: 88 million gallons of oil gushed from an oil well.
• August 1993—Tampa Bay, Florida: Three ships collided. A freighter, Balsa 37, and two barges, Bouchard B155 and Ocean 255. Tampa Bay was deluged by approximately 336,000 gallons of oil by the Bouchard.
• September 1994—Russia: An estimated 84 million gallons of oil inundated the Kolva River tributary when the dam that had been built to contain the oil burst.
• February 1996—Milford Haven, Wales: Supertanker Sea Empress ran aground off the Welsh coast dumping 70,000 tons of oil.
• December 1999—Britanny, French Atlantic coast: Erika broke apart and sank. 3 million gallons of oil spilled.
• January 2000—off Rio de Janeiro: 343,200 gallons of oil spewed into the sea after the rupture of a government pipeline.
• November 2000—Port Sulphur, Louisiana: Westchester lost power and ran aground on the Mississippi River, south of New Orleans. 567,000 gallons of oil deposited into the lower Mississippi. This was the largest U.S. spill since the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
• November 2002—Spain: The Prestige suffered a damaged single hull and was towed to sea to sink. Almost 2 million gallons of oil leaked from the vessel before it sank, and approximately 18 million gallons of oil remain underwater.

The Prestige is a perfect example of loopholes. It was operated by a Greek firm but was registered in the Bahamas and flew a Bahamian flag. The ship had been chartered by a Swiss-based Russian oil company. Registering tankers in countries known to have ineffective safety regulations or loose taxation requirements is not uncommon. Countries have the right to close their ports to ships that cannot prove documentation of a recent safety inspection.

The OPA 90 Act will have a positive impact in the decrease of accidental oil spills, but the events of the past 16+ years are an ominous indicator of how the biggest, most profitable companies in the world will react to and whitewash the black oil spills of the future.

Jan Blair

sources
Official website of Exxon Valdez victims

enviroliteracy.org

Fact Monster—World and News—Disaster Digest

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