Term paper on Exxon Valdez

Exxon Valdez Essays

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The Exxon Valdez is an American oil tanker that went aground on a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on the night of March 24, 1989. The nine hundred and eighty seven-foot tanker ran aground on a reef and started to leak oil. The leakage continued for two days, totaling eleven million gallons the largest oil spill in U.S. history. The tanker's remaining 1 million barrels of oil were removed from the hold of the damaged vessel and transferred to other tankers operated by the Exxon Company.

The cleanup of spilled oil was slow to be organized because Exxon and the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company were not prepared for the disaster. The oil slick eventually coated about 1100 miles of the Alaska’s shoreline, including numerous islands in the sound. Possibly hundreds, of thousands of shore-nesting birds were killed by the slick, as were several thousand-sea mammals, especially sea otters. The biggest economic concern was for Alaska's important salmon and herring fisheries. These were seriously affected in 1989 but subsequently recovered.

The captain of the Exxon Valdez, who had a history of substance-abuse problems, lost his job after the accident and faced criminal charges for leaving command of the ship to an officer not certified to handle it inside the sound. In 1991 the state of Alaska and the federal government came to an agreement with Exxon and the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company regarding damages caused by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The settlement covered civil and criminal claims as well as restitution. Fines and restitution payments totaling more than $1 billion dollars were to be paid over a ten-year period.

The USGS began a series of studies of the fate of the spilled oil. These studies, carried out with help from the Minerals Management Service and NOAA's Marine Fisheries Service, resulted in the discovery that, in addition to weathered products from the 1989 spill, other oil residues from an unexpected source are widely distributed in the western part of the sound. These other residues are from oil products that were previously shipped to Alaska from California. These oil products had been spilled into the sound prior to 1989; the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964, for example, caused extensive spillage of these products from onshore storage plants. This information has been of direct interest to the parties involved in litigation of the 1989 oil spill. In addition, new knowledge has been gained concerning the distribution and long-term weathering effects of spilled oil residues.

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