Exxon Valdez

1989

Bligh Reef, 11 million gallons, OPA '90 Location: Prince William Sound, Alaska, USA · Coordinates: 60.84°N 146.88°W · Casualties: 0 · Survivors: all hands · Depth: grounded · refloated · Cause: grounding — Ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound at 00:04 on 24 March 1989 after leaving the outbound shipping lane to avoid ice. Captain Joseph Hazelwood was not on the bridge at the time of grounding; a third mate had the conn. Subsequent investigation found fatigue, inadequate manning, and alleged alcohol consumption as contributing factors. · Fate: refloated · scrapped 2012 · Type: oil tanker · single-hulled · Tonnage: 214,861 DWT · Crew: 20 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1986 Single-hulled oil tanker, running Valdez to Long Beach. Ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound at 00:04 on 24 March 1989 after leaving the charted lane to avoid ice; Captain Hazelwood was not on the bridge. 11 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude spilled across 2,100 kilometres of Alaskan coastline. No crew died; the otters, orcas, and herring fisheries did, and the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 mandated double hulls on every tanker entering U.S. waters. The Vessel The Exxon Valdez was a single-hulled supertanker of 987 feet (300 metres), 214,861 deadweight tons, built at the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company in San Diego and delivered to Exxon Shipping Company in December 1986. She was the third of a planned class of five purpose-built Trans-Alaska Pipeline Service (TAPS) tankers, designed to load at the Valdez, Alaska terminal and deliver North Slope crude oil to American Pacific and Gulf Coast refineries. The class had been contracted under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, which required American-flag tankers for the North Slope trade. She carried crude oil in fifteen cargo tanks. Her hull was a single skin of mild steel; the inner bottom structure, typical of American-built tankers of her generation, was the principal barrier between her cargo and the sea. Her emergency protection against grounding relied on her cargo-tank subdivision and on the operational avoidance of grounding hazards, rather than on a second independent hull. Her captain in March 1989 was Joseph Hazelwood, 42, a 20-year Exxon Shipping veteran who had commanded the Exxon Chester, the Exxon Houston, and the Exxon New York before taking the Exxon Valdez on her first Alaska assignment in February 1987. Hazelwood had been treated for alcohol dependency between 1984 and 1986 under Exxon's employee assistance programme; he had been medically cleared to resume command duties in 1986 subject to continued outpatient treatment. His post-re The Disaster The grounding opened eight of her fifteen cargo tanks. Crude oil began leaking from the opened tanks at a rate that exceeded the ability of her emergency pumping systems to counter. Over the following two days, despite immediate response by her crew, by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company (the consortium operating the Valdez terminal), by the Exxon Shipping Company, and by the State of Alaska, approximately 11 million US gallons (260,000 barrels, 42,000 tonnes) of North Slope crude oil were released into Prince William Sound. This was the largest marine oil spill in United States history at the time, and remained so until the Deepwater Horizon release of 2010. The initial cleanup response was slow. Alyeska's oil-spill response barge, required by the Prince William Sound oil-spill contingency plan to be available within five hours, was out of service with a tarpaulin over her equipment; she did not reach the Exxon Valdez until 14 hours after the grounding. The oil spread with the prevailing currents. Within ten days the slick had covered 1,300 square kilometres; within three weeks, 2,100 kilometres of Alaskan coastline from Prince William Sound to Kodiak Island were contaminated with crude oil. The wildlife toll was unprecedented in American history: an estimated 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbour seals, 247 bald eagles, 22 orcas, and a generation of Pacific herring. Many of the remaining populations of these species in Prince William Sound have not returned to pre-s