The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a major environmental disaster that occurred in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The spill occurred when Exxon Valdez, an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 6 mi (9.7 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska, at 12:04 a.m. The tanker spilled more than 10 million US gallons (240,000 bbl) (or 37,000 tonnes) of crude oil over the next few days.
The Exxon Valdez spill is the second largest in U.S. waters, after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in terms of volume of oil released. It is the costliest disaster ever with no direct human fatalities. Prince William Sound's remote location, accessible only by helicopter, plane, or boat, made government and industry response efforts difficult and made existing response plans especially hard to implement. The region is a habitat for salmon, sea otters, seals, and seabirds. The oil, extracted from the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field, eventually affected 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of coastline, of which 200 miles (320 km) were heavily or moderately oiled.
Spill
Exxon Valdez was carrying 53.1 million US gallons (1,260,000 bbl; 201,000 m3) of oil, of which approximately 10.8 million US gallons (260,000 bbl; 41,000 m3) were spilled into the Prince William Sound.
The ship docked at the Valdez Marine Terminal at 11:30 p.m. on March 22, 1989. Loading of crude oil was completed late in the day on the 23rd. The tanker left the terminal at 9:12 p.m., March 23, 1989 (the deck log shows that it was clear of the dock at 9:21 p.m.), loaded with 53,094,510 gallons (1,264,155 barrels) of crude oil. Captain Joseph Hazelwood retired to his cabin at 9:25 p.m. Harbor pilot William Murphy and Third Mate Gregory Cousins were on the bridge while the tanker was accompanied by a single tug for the passage through the Valdez Narrows – a journey of about 7 miles. The pilot left the bridge shortly after the vessel left the narrows, at 11:24 p.m. At this point, the captain was called to the bridge. Cousins helped the pilot disembark from the vessel, leaving the captain as the only officer on the bridge. At 11:25 p.m. Exxon Valdez reported that the pilot had left. The captain advised traffic control and the ship maneuvered out of the outbound traffic lane in the Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) to avoid small icebergs; a common occurrence since the Columbia Glacier calved such icebergs nearby. The vessel was placed on a due south course and set on autopilot. At 11:47 p.m. the vessel left the traffic lane's eastern boundary. Following the maneuver, Hazelwood departed the navigation bridge and retired to his stateroom for the night.
He left Third Mate Gregory Cousins in charge of the navigation bridge and Able Seaman Robert Kagan at the helm with instructions to the third mate to return to the southbound traffic lane in the TSS at a prearranged point. Third Mate Cousins had been on duty for six hours and was scheduled to be relieved by Second Mate Lloyd LeCain Jr. However, due to the long hours that the second mate had worked, Cousins was reluctant to wake him, and remained on duty. Cousins was the only officer on the bridge for most of the night, in violation of company policy. At around midnight on March 24, Cousins began to maneuver the vessel into the traffic lanes. At the same time, the lookout reported that the Bligh Reef light appeared far off the starboard bow at 45 degrees – this was problematic given that the light should have been off the port side. Cousins ordered a course change because the ship was in danger. Captain Hazelwood was phoned by Cousins, but before their conversation could finish, the ship grounded. At 12:04 a.m., accompanied by what the helmsman and Cousins described as "a bumpy ride" and "six very sharp jolts" respectively, the ship ran hard aground on Bligh Reef.
Carried by its own momentum, the ship ended up perched on its middle on a pinnacle of rock. Eight out of 11 cargo holds were punctured. 5.8 million gallons of oil drained from the ship within three hours and 15 minutes. Thirty minutes after numerous attempts to dislodge the ship under its own power, Captain Hazelwood radioed the Coast Guard informing them of the grounding. For more than 45 minutes after the grounding, the captain attempted to maneuver free of the reef despite being informed by First Mate James Kunkel that the vessel was not structurally sound without the reef supporting it.
Multiple factors have been identified as contributing to the incident:
- Exxon Shipping Company failed to supervise the master (ship's captain) and provide a rested and sufficient crew for Exxon Valdez. The NTSB found this practice was widespread throughout the industry, prompting a safety recommendation to Exxon and to the industry.
- The third mate failed to properly maneuver the vessel, possibly due to fatigue or excessive workload.
- Exxon Shipping Company failed to properly maintain the Raytheon Collision Avoidance System (RAYCAS) radar, which, if functional, would have indicated to the third mate an impending collision with the Bligh Reef by detecting the radar reflector placed on the next rock inland from Bligh Reef for the purpose of keeping ships on course. This cause was brought forward by Greg Palast and is not presented in the official accident report.
Captain Hazelwood, who was widely reported to have been drinking heavily in a Valdez bar earlier that evening before the vessel left port, was not at the controls when the ship struck the reef shortly after midnight. Despite the fact that he was not on the bridge at the time of the accident, Exxon blamed Hazelwood for the grounding of the tanker and fired him from the company. He accused the corporation of making him a scapegoat.
Hazelwood was charged with criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, and piloting a vessel while intoxicated, but in a 1990 trial, he was cleared of the three charges. He was convicted of misdemeanor negligent discharge of oil. At trial, 21 witnesses testified that he did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol around the time of the accident.
Journalist Greg Palast stated in 2008:
Forget the drunken skipper fable. As to Captain Joe Hazelwood, he was below decks, sleeping off his bender. At the helm, the third mate may never have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his RAYCAS radar. But the radar was not turned on. In fact, the tanker's radar was left broken and disabled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was just too expensive to fix and operate.
Other factors, according to an MIT course entitled "Software System Safety" by Professor Nancy G. Leveson, included:
- Ships were not informed that the previous practice of the Coast Guard tracking ships out to Bligh Reef had ceased.
- The oil industry promised, but never installed, state-of-the-art iceberg monitoring equipment.
- Exxon Valdez was sailing outside the normal sea lane to avoid small icebergs thought to be in the area.
- Coast Guard vessel inspections in Valdez were not performed, and the number of staff was reduced.
- Lack of available equipment and personnel hampered the spill cleanup.
This disaster resulted in International Maritime Organization introducing comprehensive marine pollution prevention rules (MARPOL) through various conventions. The rules were ratified by member countries and, under International Ship Management rules, the ships are being operated with a common objective of "safer ships and cleaner oceans."
In 2009, Captain Hazelwood offered a "heartfelt apology" to the people of Alaska, suggesting he had been wrongly blamed for the disaster: "The true story is out there for anybody who wants to look at the facts, but that's not the sexy story and that's not the easy story," he said. Hazelwood said he felt Alaskans always gave him a fair shake.
Clean-up and major effects
Chemical dispersant, a surfactant and solvent mixture, was applied to the slick by a private company on March 24 with a helicopter, but the helicopter missed the target area. Scientific data on its toxicity were either thin or incomplete. In addition, public acceptance of new, widespread chemical treatment was lacking. Landowners, fishing groups, and conservation organizations questioned the use of chemicals on hundreds of miles of shoreline when other alternatives might have been available.
According to a report by David Kirby for TakePart, the main component of the Corexit formulation used during cleanup, 2-butoxyethanol, was identified as "one of the agents that caused liver, kidney, lung, nervous system, and blood disorders among cleanup crews in Alaska following the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill". It is now known that while 2-butoxyethanol is indeed a respiratory irritant that can be acutely toxic, animal studies did not find it to be mutagenic, and no studies suggest it to be a human carcinogen.
Mechanical cleanup was started shortly afterward using booms and skimmers, but the skimmers were not readily available during the first 24 hours following the spill, and thick oil and kelp tended to clog the equipment. Despite civilian insistence for a complete cleanup, only 10% of total oil was actually completely cleaned. Exxon was widely criticized for its slow response to cleaning up the disaster and John Devens, the mayor of Valdez, said his community felt betrayed by Exxon's inadequate response to the crisis. More than 11,000 Alaska residents, along with some Exxon employees, worked throughout the region to try to restore the environment.
Though the clean-up effort was diligent, it failed to contain the majority of the oil that had spilled, and that has been blamed heavily upon Exxon. On November 26, 1984, Ronald A. Kreizenbeck (Director, Alaska Operations Office) informed the Coast Guard that the EPA suspected, due to a recent site-visitation during an 'Annual Marine Drill', that the Port of Valdez was not prepared to "efficiently respond to a major spill event". In the letter, he stated that "[it] appears that the Vikoma boom and/or deployment vessels used may not be adequate to handle the harsh environmental conditions of Port Valdez".
Because Prince William Sound contained many rocky coves where the oil was collected, the decision was made to displace it with high-pressure hot water. However, this also displaced and destroyed the microbial populations on the shoreline; many of these organisms (e.g. plankton) are the basis of the coastal marine food chain, and others (e.g., certain bacteria and fungi) are capable of facilitating the biodegradation of oil. At the time, both scientific advice and public pressure was to clean everything, but since then, a much greater understanding of natural and facilitated remediation processes has developed, due somewhat in part to the opportunity presented for study by the Exxon Valdez spill.
Both long-term and short-term effects of the oil spill have been studied. Immediate effects include the deaths of between 100,000 and 250,000 seabirds, at least 2,800 sea otters, approximately 12 river otters, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles, and 22 orcas, and an unknown number of salmon and herring.
Nine years after the disaster, evidence of negative oil spill effects on marine birds was found in the following species: cormorants, goldeneyes, mergansers, murres and pigeon guillemots.
Although the volume of oil has declined considerably, with oil remaining only about 0.14–0.28% of the original spilled volume, studies suggest that the area of oiled beach has changed little since 1992. A study by the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA in Juneau, determined that by 2001 approximately 90 tonnes of oil remained on beaches in Prince William Sound in the sandy soil of the contaminated shoreline, with annual loss rates declining from 68% per year prior to 1992, to 4% per year after 2001.
The remaining oil lasting far longer than anticipated has resulted in more long-term losses of species than had been expected. Laboratory experiments found that at levels as low as one part per billion, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are toxic for salmon and herring eggs. Species as diverse as sea otters, harlequin ducks, and orcas suffered immediate and long-term losses. Oiled mussel beds and other tidal shoreline habitats may take up to 30 years to recover.
ExxonMobil denied concerns over the remaining oil, stating that they anticipated the remaining fraction would not cause long-term ecological impacts. According to the conclusions of ExxonMobil's study: "We've done 350 peer-reviewed studies of Prince William Sound, and those studies conclude that Prince William Sound has recovered, it's healthy and it's thriving."