case study of exxon valdez oil spill

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Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 23, 2021 | Original: March 9, 2018

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a manmade disaster that occurred when Exxon Valdez , an oil tanker owned by the Exxon Shipping Company, spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. It was the worst oil spill in U.S. history until the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. The Exxon Valdez oil slick covered 1,300 miles of coastline and killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters, seals and whales. Nearly 30 years later, pockets of crude oil remain in some locations. After the spill, Exxon Valdez returned to service under a different name, operating for more than two decades as an oil tanker and ore carrier.

On the evening of March 23, 1989, Exxon Valdez left the port of Valdez, Alaska , bound for Long Beach, California , with 53 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude oil onboard.

At four minutes after midnight on March 24, the ship struck Bligh Reef, a well-known navigation hazard in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

The impact of the collision tore open the ship’s hull, causing some 11 million gallons of crude oil to spill into the water.

At the time, it was the largest single oil spill in U.S. waters. Initial attempts to contain the oil failed, and in the months that followed, the oil slick spread, eventually covering about 1,300 miles of coastline.

Investigators later learned that Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of Exxon Valdez , had been drinking at the time and had allowed an unlicensed third mate to steer the massive ship.

In March 1990, Hazelwood was acquitted of felony charges. He was convicted of a single charge of misdemeanor negligence, fined $50,000, and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service.

Oil Spill Cleanup

In the months after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Exxon employees, federal responders and more than 11,000 Alaska residents worked to clean up the oil spill.

Exxon payed about $2 billion in cleanup costs and $1.8 billion for habitat restoration and personal damages related to the spill.

Cleanup workers skimmed oil from the water’s surface, sprayed oil dispersant chemicals in the water and on shore, washed oiled beaches with hot water and rescued and cleaned animals trapped in oil.

Environmental officials purposefully left some areas of shoreline untreated so they could study the effect of cleanup measures, some of which were unproven at the time. They later found that aggressive washing with high-pressure, hot water hoses was effective in removing oil, but did even more ecological damage by killing the remaining plants and animals in the process.

One of those areas that was oiled but never cleaned is a large shoreline boulder called Mearn’s Rock. Scientists have returned to Mearn’s Rock every summer since the spill to photograph the plants and small critters growing on it. They found that many of the mussels, barnacles and various seaweeds growing on the rock before the spill returned to normal levels about three to four years after the spill.

Environmental And Economic Impacts

Prince William Sound had been a pristine wilderness before the spill. The Exxon Valdez disaster dramatically changed all of that, taking a major toll on wildlife. It killed an estimated 250,000 sea birds, 3,000 otters, 300 seals, 250 bald eagles and 22 killer whales.

The oil spill also may have played a role in the collapse of salmon and herring fisheries in Prince William Sound in the early 1990s. Fishermen went bankrupt, and the economies of small shoreline towns, including Valdez and Cordova, suffered in the following years.

Some reports estimated the total economic loss from the Exxon Valdez oil spill to be as much as $2.8 billion.

A 2001 study found oil contamination remaining at more than half of the 91 beach sites tested in Prince William Sound.

The spill had killed an estimated 40 percent of all sea otters living in the Sound. The sea otter population didn’t recover to its pre-spill levels until 2014, twenty-five years after the spill.

Stocks of herring, once a lucrative source of income for Prince William Sound fisherman, have never fully rebounded.

READ MORE:  Water and Air Pollution

Oil Pollution Act of 1990

In the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the U.S. Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which President George H.W. Bush signed into law that year.

The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 increased penalties for companies responsible for oil spills and required that all oil tankers in United States waters have a double hull.

Exxon Valdez was a single-hulled tanker; a double-hull design, by making it less likely that a collision would have spilled oil, might have prevented the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Fate of Exxon Valdez

The ship, Exxon Valdez —first commissioned in 1986—was repaired and returned to service a year after the spill in a different ocean and under a different name.

The single-hulled ship could no longer transport oil in U.S. waters, due to the new regulations. The ship began running oil transport routes in Europe, where single-hulled oil tankers were still allowed. There it was renamed the Exxon Mediterranean , then the SeaRiver Mediterranean and finally the S/R Mediterranean.

In 2002, the European Union banned single-hulled tankers and the former Exxon Valdez moved to Asian waters.

Exxon sold the infamous tanker in 2008 to a Hong Kong-based shipping company. The company converted the old oil tanker to an ore carrier, renaming it the Dong Feng Ocean . In 2010, the star-crossed ship collided with another bulk carrier in the Yellow Sea and was once again severely damaged.

The ship was renamed once more after the collision, becoming the Oriental Nicety . The Oriental Nicety was sold for scrap to an Indian company and dismantled in 2012.

Exxon Valdez laid to rest; Nature . The never-ending history of life on a rock; NOAA . Economic impacts of the spill; Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council .

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The Complete Story Of The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

It is indisputable that the discovery of oil has dramatically changed human life. Oil dominates our daily lives in several forms. However, at the same time, petroleum and its by-products have become a major environmental threat.

Oil Spills involving tankers and rigs have polluted water bodies and badly affected the marine ecosystem. Over the last two centuries, several marine accidents have resulted in the spillage of millions of gallons of oil into our oceans .

Among the oil spills that occurred in the last five decades, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill remains the worst to date. Over 11 million gallons of crude oil were released into the waters of the Gulf of Alaska in the accident that took place almost 30 years ago, killing thousands of marine lives.

Table of Contents

Major Facts about the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

It was on March 24, 1989, that the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck the Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound region to begin one of the biggest maritime fatalities. Exxon Valdez, then owned by Exxon Shipping Company, was en route to Long Beach, California, from the Valdez Marine Terminal when it slammed into the reef at around 12 am local time.

The oil tanker Exxon Valdez was loaded with roughly 54 million gallons of oil, of which 10.8 million gallons were released into the waters of Prince William Sound as the hull of the vessel was torn open in the accident. The Exxon Valdez oil spill is considered the second major oil spill in the US after the Gulf of Mexico’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The Exxon Valdez disaster led to the examination of oil spill prevention rules and regulations in the US. The 1990 Oil Pollution Act mandated that oil companies take more extraordinary precautions by operating double-hull tankers and pay more significant penalties in case of future oil spills. In addition, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council was formed to restore the marine habitats affected by accidents.

What Caused the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill?

Various reports following the accident have identified a number of factors that caused Exxon Valdez to run aground on the reef under the command of Captain Joseph Hazelwood. It was reported that the captain was not at the helm of the tanker when it encountered the accident on a route known for its navigational hazards.

According to reports, before handing over the ship’s control to the Third Mate, Hazelwood had apparently altered the vessel’s course to avoid icebergs. Unfortunately, the third mate failed to manoeuvre the vessel properly, and the ship left the shipping lane to collide with the reef, chiefly due to broken radar. The radar had not worked for over a year before the oil spill accident.

Further investigations also revealed that Hazelwood was under the influence of alcohol, and he was asleep in his bunk during the accident. Investigators also pointed out that Hazelwood made a mistake by handing over the vessel’s helm to the sleep-deprived Third Mate, who was also not professionally qualified to take control of the vessel. Further investigations revealed that the vessel didn’t have sufficient crew abroad to perform the duties.

Moreover, authorities found that Exxon, like many other shipping companies, was not following agreed-upon measures, including installing iceberg monitoring equipment.

Reports also said the accident occurred as the ship took a route not prescribed under the standard shipping route. Because of this violation by Exxon Valdez, its owner, Exxon Mobil, charted out a clause requiring the strict following of the prescribed shipping routes and lanes to avoid any further marine accident of a magnitude like the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.

After a year-long investigation and trial, Hazelwood was acquitted of being drunk during the voyage. However, the captain was convicted of misdemeanour negligence, fined $50,000, and sentenced to serve 1,000 hours of community service.

The Impact of Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

The collision of the supertanker with the reef ruptured 8 of its 11 cargo tanks, releasing 11 million gallons of crude oil-250,000 barrels into the waters of Prince William Sound, contaminating over 1,300 miles of coastline.

A delay in initiating cleanup made this accident catastrophic. The oil slick spread to more areas within days, making it no longer containable.

As the oil slick spread, marine wildlife was threatened. Marine mammals face extinction because of the rise in temperatures, and they have to deal with this human error .

Seabirds were forced to succumb to this disaster as the oil slick in the water trapped them to drown eventually. It is estimated that almost 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, up to 300 harbour seals, 250 bald eagles, and at least 22 killer whales were killed.

The spill ended the lives of herring and salmon, and commercial fishing of crab, herring, rockfish, salmon, shrimp, etc., was closed in the area. Many were impacted financially, but its indirect impact was visible on fisheries.

Due to the reduction and, in some areas, the complete absence of recreational fishing, a total financial loss of up to $580 million occurred.

Tourism was also hampered, and the number of tourists who arrived in Alaska was at a record low for almost a year following the oil spill, significantly impacting the local economy. According to reports, the oil spill affected more than 26,000 jobs in the tourism industry and over $2.4 billion in business.

Even though the company Exxon Mobil helped greatly in the clean-up operations along with the US Coast Guard, the inadvertent-yet-avertable accident caused by the Exxon Valdez ended up leaving a huge environmental impact.

Even years after the accident, the shoreline has yet to recover entirely from the oil spill. The oil discharged from the Exxon Valdez still clogs the beaches in Alaska, the fishing industry that collapsed after the accident hasn’t recovered fully, and the trauma it created among the fishing communities still remains- in the form of separated families and alcoholism.

Clean-Up of the Exxon Valdez Spill

The cleanup efforts were successful since the response to the incident was prompt by the US government and the company – Exxon Mobil.

Over 11,000 personnel, 58 aircraft, and 1,400 vessels were used to clear the affected area, and it involved complex operations like relocating several marine creatures to safeguard their lives until the clean-up operations were completed successfully.

The entire clean-up operation took around three years, from 1989 to 1992, and marine scientists are monitoring the area even now.

According to reports, the shipping company spent more than $3.8 billion on the cleanup costs and compensated 11,000 fishermen and others affected by the disaster.

The accident also led to several legal battles between the shipping company, the federal government, and the Alaska Fishers’ Union.

In 1994, an Alaskan court ordered Exxon to pay $5 billion in punitive damages. However, after several appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court reduced the amount to $507.5 million. During the operation, the oil cleaning methods included burning, mechanical cleanup, and chemical dispersants.

Surface oil was cleared up more significantly, while the ‘sub-surface oil’ remained. It contains far more poisonous, and despite the clean-up, about 20 acres of the Alaskan coastline is polluted by sub-surface oil.

The enormity of the marine casualty caused by Exxon Valdez is being felt even recently. However, owing to the prompt and effective response from the concerned parties, the impact of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill will definitely be reduced.

Owing to this positivity, one can rest assured that despite an accident, one managed to avert the worst and did a marine salvage in the best possible manner.

You might also like to read:

• After the Big Spill, What Happened to the Ship Exxon Valdez?
• Video: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Effects Linger
• What is an Oil Spill at Sea: Drills, Prevention And Methods Of Cleanup
• Video: Simulator Demonstrates Exxon Valdez Mishap
• 9 Methods for Oil Spill Cleanup at Sea
• Top 20 Major Oil Spill Incidents Since 1967

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About Author

Journalist by training, and an academic in aspiration, Shamseer Mambra currently works as a freelance journalist, after spending three years in the newsrooms of some of the reputed media houses in India. When not at work, he likes to read, click photographs and go for a ride on his bike.

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BE THE FIRST TO COMMENT

This oil spill happened because the vessel traffic controllers at VTS Valdez dropped the ball. How do I know this, because I did that job in the late 70’s. I personally know both controllers involved.

You rehash the tired story that Captain Hazlewood was under the influence of alcohol. That was disputed at the time and later in court where he received considerable compensation for damage to his professional image. He never worked again at sea due to his tarnished reputation. EXXON blamed everyone else for the disaster while sending out smoke screen after smoke screen trying to avoid their own complicity. Their response to the oil spill was initially chaotic and badly co-ordinated, had they responded as you suggest many of the problems still affecting Prince William Sound could have been avoided. The biggest casualty of the EXXON lie were the unfortunate seamen who serve on ships trading world-wide who are subjected to unwarranted drug and alcohol tests imposed under the so called EXXON CLAUSE in most tanker charter parties. This draconian measure was one of the smoke screens employed to divert researchers from looking too closely for the real causes. I would remind everyone, the incident happened to a US flagged vessel with a US crew in a US port. Part of the US cabotage or Jones Act fleet. Why did the rest of the world have to pay for the poor management of EXXON tankers?

A lot of mistakes in this article. And the primary cause has not been revealed in the article. I have spent 3 years researching the incident and I think I have worked out the primary cause.

It’s been 30 years since the incident and it’s time everyone knows the true facts that occurred at the time of the incident. I was one of the first response contractors to step on the deck after the spill. I went straight to the galley where I met an individual that was at the helm “Bob” from Harahan La. he told me all of the deals of the event and there’s a lot more to the story than told.

Is English your second language? Or did you skip writing classes while in school. This article is very poorly written.

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Exxon Valdez

Oil spill | prince william sound, alaska | march 1989, what happened.

On March 24, 1989 the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of oil. The ecologically sensitive location, season of the year, and large scale of this spill resulted in one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history.

Exxon settled in 1991 with funds disbursed in three discrete parts: criminal plea agreement ($25 million), criminal restitution ($100 million), and civil settlement ($900 million).

What Were the Impacts?

The spill affected more than 1,300 miles of shoreline, with immense impacts for fish and wildlife and their habitats, as well as for local industries and communities.

The oil killed:

• An estimated 250,000 seabirds
• 2,800 sea otters
• 300 harbor seals
• 250 bald eagles
• As many as 22 killer whales
• Billions of salmon and herring eggs

More than 25 years since the spill, the following species remain in a “Not Recovering” or “Unknown” status:

• Killer whales (family group known as pod AT1)
• Kittlitz’s murrelets
• Marbled murrelets
• Pigeon guillemots

What’s Happening Now?

Settlement funds have been used to fund multiple restoration and protection projects throughout Prince William Sound, the Gulf of Alaska, and for habitats outside of the state that are important for migratory species. More than 600,000 acres of land have been protected using settlement funds and matching funds from numerous restoration, research, and monitoring programs.

Current restoration activities are focused on:

• Long-term herring research and monitoring
• Long-term monitoring of marine conditions and injured resources
• Shorter-term harbor protection and restoration projects
• Lingering oil
• Habitat protection

Long-term monitoring of marine conditions and restoration effectiveness is ongoing.

Ultimately, the Exxon Valdez spill resulted in a close examination of the status of oil spill prevention, response, and cleanup in the United States. One result was the passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 , which led to the establishment of NOAA’s DARRP program.

Learn more about the Exxon Valdez spill assessment and restoration activities .

"I think the big surprise for all of us who have worked on this thing for the last 25 years has been the continued presence of relatively fresh oil."

Gary Shigenaka NOAA Marine Biologist

Erika Ammann NOAA Restoration Center Anchorage , AK  99513 907-271-5118 [email protected]

• Restoring Rivers to Reverse Impacts from Pollution
• Story Map: Examining the Oil Pollution Act’s Legacy Through 30 Oil Spills
• Story Map: The Spills Behind the Oil Pollution Act

Last updated August 17, 2020

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Lessons Learned From the Exxon Valdez Spill

• Monitoring the Sound
• Remaining Oil
• Ecological Recovery
• Spill Response

The ultimate goal for the NOAA Prince William Sound Monitoring Program has always been to improve the way we respond to oil spills in a complex environment like Alaska's Prince William Sound.

Our goal is to use science to better understand physical and biological recovery and then apply the lessons to spill response. The insights we gain relate to both the process of environmental monitoring itself and impacts caused by the spill and cleanup. So, what have we learned?

Science Alongside Cleanup

First, it is difficult to assess the impacts from a disturbance—even a major one like the Exxon Valdez spill—in a dynamic system like Prince William Sound. The inherently high degree of natural variability found in such systems can limit or preclude the use of standard or traditional statistical methods.

So-called "set-aside sites," areas that were oiled but intentionally left uncleaned, have been critical to the NOAA monitoring program's ability to determine impacts due to oiling alone and those due to cleanup. During an oil spill, there are compelling reasons to clean up all oil; however, to monitor the recovery of shorelines, set-aside sites are key considerations. We recommend that the concept be discussed during oil spill contingency planning and again during the inevitable spill events.

Effects of the Cleanup

High-pressure, hot-water washing of shorelines , while effective at removing stranded oil, can damage plants and animals in the treated zone directly and indirectly, short-term and long-term. This might seem obvious, but before the Exxon Valdez spill there was almost no real documentation of these impacts.

We now know the negative effects of agressive shoreline cleanup methods like high-pressure, hot-water washing. However, this does not mean we would eliminate its use in the future. Hopefully, with the guidance of monitoring efforts like this one, we can employ the method in a wiser fashion.

Impacts on Habitat

Physical characteristics of the habitat determine the makeup of biological communities. Therefore, altering the physical features of a beach or shoreline can significantly affect the recovery of impacted plants or animals. Physical recovery and stabilization of a site are necessary for biological recovery.

For example, when the beach at Eleanor Island (one of our study sites) was cleaned, its silty sediments were noticeably washed out into the water. We believe that many, if not most, of the animals that normally live in this kind of beach require a certain mix of fine-grained sediments. Many would not return until the beach sediments had stabilized.

If there is a proverbial silver lining to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, it must include the fact that the incident and its aftermath represented a remarkable opportunity to learn from misfortune . Our research is but one example of the many scientific investigations in Prince William Sound that should help us to understand the environment, how it responds to oil spills and cleanup, and how we can facilitate the process of recovery—however you may choose to define that term.

More Information about the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: Learn how the Exxon Valdez spill, while an unfortunate incident, provided a necessary impetus to reexamine the state of oil spill prevention, response, and cleanup.

Podcast: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill 20th Anniversary Special [MP3, 11 MB, 12 minutes]: NOAA's National Ocean Service talks with OR&R's senior scientist, Dr. Alan Mearns, who was involved in the initial spill response for the Exxon Valdez accident. Dr. Mearns has spent years leading a project that continues to monitor the long-term impact of the huge oil spill. (Making Waves Episode 20, March 13, 2009)

Prince William's Oily Mess: A Tale of Recovery: Read a case study of the Exxon Valdez spill, accompanied by a set of supporting resources, including student and teacher guides, an interactive quiz, an exercise with real data, and an interview with an OR&R scientist.

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill 20 Years Later: A NOS Scientist's Perspective [PDF, 268 KB]: Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Alan Mearns, a senior staff scientist with the Office of Response and Restoration, talks about what it was like to be involved in the initial cleanup and how different it is responding to oil spills today.

Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI): Established by Congress in response to the Exxon Valdez spill, OSRI works to identify and develop the best available techniques, equipment, and materials for responding to oil spills in the Arctic and sub-Arctic marine environment.

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council: This partnership was formed to oversee ecosystem restoration in Prince William Sound. Learn more about the Exxon Valdez spill, its impacts, and restoration and research efforts.

Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council: An independent non-profit organization, the Citizens' Advisory Council works to reduce pollution from crude oil transportation through Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska.

Go back to the Exxon Valdez oil spill overview page.

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Exxon Valdez oil spill

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• Academia - The Social and Political Meaning of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
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Exxon Valdez oil spill , massive oil spill that occurred on March 24, 1989, in Prince William Sound , an inlet in the Gulf of Alaska , Alaska , U.S. The incident happened after an Exxon Corporation tanker, the Exxon Valdez , ran aground on Bligh Reef during a voyage from Valdez , Alaska, to California. Delayed efforts to contain the spill and naturally strong winds and waves dispersed nearly 11,000,000 gallons (41,640 kilolitres) of North Slope crude oil across the sound. The spill eventually polluted 1,300 miles (2,092 kilometres) of indented shoreline, as well as adjacent waters, as far south as the southern end of Shelikof Strait between Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula . Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens emerged as a strong proponent of securing federal funds to pay for the damage. Thousands of workers and volunteers helped to clean up after the oil spill, and Exxon provided $2.1 billion in funding. Despite these cleanup efforts, the spill exterminated much native wildlife, including salmon , herring , sea otters, bald eagles, and killer whales.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) eventually assigned most of the blame for the oil spill to Exxon , citing its incompetent and overworked crew. The board also faulted the U.S. Coast Guard for an inadequate system of traffic regulation. After evidence suggested that Joseph J. Hazelwood, the ship’s captain, had been drinking before the accident, Exxon terminated his employment. In 1990 the U.S. Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act in direct response to the Exxon Valdez accident. Among other measures, the act created procedures for responding to future oil spills, established the legal liabilities of responsible parties, and set a schedule for banning single-hulled tankers from U.S. waters by 2015.

The Exxon Valdez itself was repaired and returned to service but was legally prohibited by a clause in the Oil Pollution Act from ever reentering Prince William Sound. Recommissioned the Exxon Mediterranean , it worked the Mediterranean Sea until single-hulled vessels were banned from European waters. In 2008 it was converted by a Hong Kong company to an ore carrier, and in 2012, under the name Oriental Nicety , it was sold for scrapping in Alang, India.

The Exxon Valdez , 25 Years Later

Making waves: episode 122.

:::::: --> Recovery Timeline

The tanker Exxon Valdez spilled almost 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, injuring 28 types of animals, plants, and marine habitats. How long has it taken them to recover from this spill? Twenty-five years later, which ones have not recovered? Here is a timeline showing when natural resources were declared officially "recovered," through actual recovery could have occurred earlier than this official designation from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council. Click/tap on the map for a larger view | Download this graphic

Listen to our latest podcast

In this podcast, we talk with NOAA marine biologist Gary Shigenaka to find out how marine life is faring in Prince William Sound today. We also look at lessons we might learn from this environmental disaster in light of growing oil exploration and shipping traffic in the Arctic.

[SHIP RADIO] "Yeah, this is Valdez. We've ... should be on your radar there. We've fetched up, hard aground, north of Goose Island off Bligh Reef and ... evidently ... leaking some oil ...  "

[NARRATOR] That radio call was made on March 24th, 1989. An oil tanker had struck Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound. It was the beginning of one of the biggest environmental disasters in U.S. history. This is Making Waves from NOAA's National Ocean Service. I'm Troy Kitch. In today's show, the Exxon Valdez oil spill—twenty-five years later. After the Exxon Valdez spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean, a team of NOAA scientists arrived on-scene to provide scientific support during the long clean-up. Biologist Gary Shigenaka was a member of that team. The Exxon Valdez was his first introduction to working on a big oil spill for NOAA.

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "It changed the course of my career and possibly even my life and it really defined the challenges of understanding environmental disturbance in a complex setting like Prince William Sound." 

[NARRATOR] That's Gary, and he's with us today by phone from his Seattle office where he works as a biologist in NOAA's Response and Restoration office.  He said that part of what made this spill unique was not only its size, but that it happened in such a remote place. There just weren't any response assets that could quickly be called up to go clean up the oil:

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "... like vessels, airplanes, and people and specialized pieces of gear like containment boom. Prior to that other recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Deepwater Horizon, it was the largest spill to occur in U.S. waters and it was a benchmark in a lot of ways. The shortcomings that were identified during the initial and longer-term response resulted in major changes to U.S. law, primarily expressed in a piece of legislation known as the Oil Pollution Act of 1990."

[NARRATOR] That law led to things like making sure we were more prepared and better trained to deal with spills, prepositioning equipment around the nation, and requiring all oil tankers in the U.S. to have double hulls -- but these changes only tell part of the story. The kind of change we're going to talk about for the rest of the show doesn't involve improvements in ship hull design, new laws, or better training ... it involves nature. And how scientists try to figure out what's going on in nature. Twenty-five years later ... how is this remote region of Alaska faring? That's a question that we'll see is not so easy to answer.  Remember when Gary said that this spill defined the challenges of understanding environmental disturbance in a complex setting? What exactly does that mean? Well, he said Prince William Sound is a very complex ecosystem, a place with gravely intertidal areas, glaciers, and exotic wildlife like whales, salmon, and sea otters. And, above all, it's a region where the environment is constantly in flux. This area changes rapidly from year to year.

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "Our monitoring program after the spill really showed how variable the Prince William Sound marine environment is even without a disturbance like the spill. So this is looking at what we call the unoiled, what we call the 'control sites,' and this inherent variability has translated into big challenges for tracking the signal of the spill, especially after the first year or two after it begins to fade a little bit, then it's get harder to separate the signal of the spill from the inherent background variability that is characteristic for Prince William Sound. Basically, if things are changing a lot at the sites you're monitoring and it isn't linked to the oil spill, you know, how do you define when things are back to 'normal,' in quotes I guess that would be."

[NARRATOR] Adding to this 'inherent variability,' there was something else to consider.

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "And the other thing that made it unique at the time of the spill was the fact that it really was still recovering from another major disturbance that happened exactly 25 years before the Exxon Valdez and that was the Great Alaskan earthquake, which was one of the largest that's been recorded to date.  And we can really focus in on Prince William Sound because Prince William Sound was one of the most impacted areas in Alaska. There were places that were uplifted as much as 30 feet during that particular earthquake. So you can imagine the shorelines changed really radically. So then we would have a human event superimposed on a large-scale natural event.  So it's a complex kind of picture."               [NARRATOR] So given all of these variables, can we really say anything about how fish, animals, and plants are recovering from the spill? Gary said in some cases, yes. But it often depends on knowing what conditions were like before the spill happened.

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "Whenever we have a spill or when we're trying to assess the impact of any action or disturbance on an environment in question, we always ask, 'well, what were things like beforehand.' And for oil spills, we rarely know. In the case of the Exxon Valdez , there was one exception, and it's proved to be important."

[NARRATOR] The exception was a monitoring program of orcas that had been ongoing in the Sound for at least five years before the spill.

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "That pre-spill information showed that something in 1989 drastically reduced the numbers of orcas in two groups that frequents Prince William Sound and that's something that's mostly unheard of in generally stable populations of large marine mammals. And then the continuing monitoring after the spill has shown a very disturbing recovery pattern. One not so disturbing: one group of orca whales in Prince William Sound is slowly recovering, but the other group of orcas is declining towards extinction. So that kind of demonstrates what the value is of pre-spill information, but again, it's very rarely available, so the next best thing that we've got for comparing oiled or cleaned site conditions to those of unoiled sites is to look at comparable sites that were not subject to the impact, in this case the oil spill."

[NARRATOR] After the spill, other long-term monitoring studies were started, some of which are still ongoing to this day. One study looked at how the gravel and rocky shorelines along the Sound recovered from some of the more aggressive clean-up methods used to remove oil. Were shorelines more damaged by the clean up than the oil alone? The answer: yes. But the flip side is that these beaches also recovered quite quickly. And this points to a reality of cleaning up oil spills: it's often about choosing between tradeoffs.

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "There was more damage, but the shoreline communities fairly quickly compensated for that additional damage and, within a year or two, they were about at the same place, and then after three or four years, most of the damage from both oil and clean up was gone. So we could say they were effectively recovered. So you put that into a clean up context and you try to determine what the tradeoffs are. Are you willing to accept that kind of a cost to get more oil out of the environment, and that's something that happens all the time in terms of in making your choices for oil spill clean up methods."

[NARRATOR] And then there are still things that science can't yet explain. I asked Gary what's most surprising today about this spill after so many years.

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "There's still pockets of oil in some places in Prince William Sound and along the Alaskan Peninsula and it's still relatively fresh. I don't think anyone really expected that after 25 years and we don't fully understand why. I think that's something that'll be important to try to figure out for the future."

[NARRATOR] Unexpected pockets of relatively fresh oil, gravel beaches that returned pretty much to normal after four or five years, animal populations that have recovered or are still trying to recover today...how do scientists deal with so much often conflicting data? How can we know if changes or recovery times are due to the oil spill or if there are other factors at play? How do we know when an area is 'recovered?' This all points back at what Gary says is the main take-away lesson after 25 years of studying the aftermath of this spill: the natural environment in Alaska and in the Arctic are rapidly changing. If we don't understand that background change, than it's really hard to say if an area has recovered or not after a big oil spill. 

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "I think we need to really keep in mind that maybe our prior notions of recovery as returning to some pre-spill or absolute control condition may be outmoded. We need to really overlay that with the dynamic changes that are occurring for whatever reason and adjust our assessments and definitions accordingly. I don't have the answers for the best way to do that. We've gotten some ideas from the work that we've done, but I think that as those changes begin to accelerate and become much more marked, then it's going to be harder to do."

[NARRATOR] So given what we've heard so far, 25 years later, is Prince William Sound generally considered recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill?

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "No. There's a pretty robust research program that's been going on in Prince William Sound -- not just ours -- but a whole series of research and monitoring activities and mostly under the auspices of the Exxon Valdez oil spill trustee council."

[NARRATOR] He said that this group has been looking at a fixed set of resources for nearly the entire time that has passed since the spill.

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "And slowly but surely, there list of impacted resources has been switching from one column, impacted, to another column, recovered. And most recently, they've moved a couple of persistent unrecovered resources -- and that would be sea otters and harlequin ducks—from the 'not recovered' column to the 'recovered' column. So that's good news but we've still got a handful of resources that remain in the 'not recovered' column, including the orcas I mentioned. The short answer to the question, I think, is because not everything has moved over to the recovered column, then you can't really say that Prince William Sound has recovered.

[NARRATOR] But, he added, Prince William Sound has made a lot of progress over the past two and a half decades.

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "It's in some ways encouraging to see that the environment can rebound from something like a major oil spill, but it is still a little distressing that we can't just say 25 years after the fact that things have recovered completely."

[NARRATOR] Gary attributed most of that progress in environmental restoration not to human efforts, but to the resiliency of nature.

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "Nature has pretty much on its own—I mean we did some good with the clean up but the estimates of how much oil that our clean up efforts removed from the environment versus the amount of oil that was naturally degraded or removed from the environment, it's pretty discouraging in terms of the scale of the efforts that we posed during the spill. It comes out somewhere between 10-15 percent of the total oil spilled was recovered by our clean up efforts. So the natural environment pretty much does the job on its own. We can help a little bit, and I think we can make a big difference for highly sensitive areas, but for the most part we're just a footnote to oil spill clean up from the environment overall."

[NARRATOR] So what we know is that things have improved over time since the spill in Prince William Sound, but it's hard to quantify because the environment is changing so quickly and in so many ways. This variability and rapid change is perhaps most profound in the Arctic. And as the Arctic continues to warm and the prospect of more human activity in this region seems inevitable -- think shipping and oil exploration—what can Exxon Valdez teach us?

[GARY SHIGENAKA] "Well I think, for us, the very concept of an oil spill in the Arctic is scary and there's a lot of reasons for that. First of all, it's obviously really a difficult environment to work in because of the weather, and then logistically, as well as culturally. So if you thought that Prince William Sound was remote, then responding to a spill in the Arctic would be almost like working on the moon. But also from an assessment perspective, the Arctic is kind of on the leading edge of some of the most rapid and radical changes that are taking place in the natural world. People who live in that area talk about the absence of long-term ice -- the old ice that used to be a part of their environment or the fact that their cellars that they use as natural refrigerators and freezers now are melting and flooding. So the Arctic communities are really bellwethers for the changes that occurring related to climate change and a lot of the other large-scale influences that are taking place because of human influences. So that's really going to affect our ability to characterize impact and recovery for the same reasons that it's difficult to do a place like Prince William Sound from the Exxon Valdez ."

[NARRATOR] That was Gary Shigenaka, marine biologist with the Emergency Response Division of NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration. This is Making Waves from NOAA's National Ocean Service. Subscribe to us in   and leave us some feedback about what you think of the show. We'll return in a few weeks with a new episode.

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Remembering The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

Why the exxon valdez spill was a eureka moment for science.

Elizabeth Shogren

An oiled murre passes the darkened shoreline near Prince William Sound, Alaska, less than a month after the March 1989 spill. Erik Hill/Anchorage Daily News/MCT/Landov hide caption

An oiled murre passes the darkened shoreline near Prince William Sound, Alaska, less than a month after the March 1989 spill.

On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine water. At the time, it was the single biggest spill in U.S. history. In a series of stories, NPR is examining the lasting social and economic impacts of the disaster, as well as the policy, regulation and scientific research that came out of it.

Twenty-five years of research following the Exxon Valdez disaster has led to some startling conclusions about the persistent effects of spilled oil.

When the tanker leaked millions of gallons of the Alaskan coast, scientists predicted major environmental damage, but they expected those effects to be short lived. Instead, they've stretched out for many years.

What researchers learned as they puzzled through the reasons for the delayed recovery fundamentally changed the way scientists view oil spills. One of their most surprising discoveries was that long-lasting components of oil thought to be benign turned out to cause chronic damage to fish hearts when fish were exposed to tiny concentrations of the compounds as embryos.

Cordova, Alaska, was the fishing village closest to the spill. Since then it's become a hub for scientists. Researchers recently gathered in the town's library to talk about herring. It was the herring that tipped off scientists that oil's effects were far more complicated than they had imagined.

Here's what happened: Herring were spawning at the time of the spill. None of those herring eggs survived, but a year later the herring population seemed to bounce back.

Twenty five years after the oil spill, Cordova, Alaska, has become a hub for scientists. Marisa Penaloza/NPR hide caption

Twenty five years after the oil spill, Cordova, Alaska, has become a hub for scientists.

Scientist Jeep Rice, who recently retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says herring seemed to match conventional wisdom about the "nature of oil spills."

"You studied them for one or two years. When things were back on track, you walked away," Rice says. "And so we walked away from herring. And all of a sudden they crash to the bottom of the floor, and then we're scrambling trying to figure out why."

In addition to the herring population crashing, other animals — such as killer whales, sea otters, harlequin ducks — also unexpectedly continued to suffer years after the spill.

Scientists had traditionally believed that oil basically had to cover an animal or embryo to hurt it. But the evidence they saw in Alaska suggested it didn't take much oil to do a lot of damage. And that damage could manifest in different ways.

For example, oil under rocks and in sediments contaminated clams that sea otters ate. It didn't kill the otters outright: Wildlife biologist Dan Esler of the U.S. Geological Survey says it shortened otters' lives and suppressed the population for 20 years.

"The understanding that lingering oil could have chronic effects on wildlife populations was a new and important finding, and one that we did not anticipate at the time that we started the research," Esler says.

Through years of research, scientists discovered another unexpected effect, this time related to fish eggs. The clue came from pink salmon, which weren't doing well even years after the spill. To figure out why, Rice's team exposed pink salmon embryos to tiny amounts of oil.

"We were dosing them with oil that you couldn't see [and] you couldn't smell. But we were doing it for a really long time," Rice says. "And six months later, they had abnormalities."

Rice says it was one of the many "wows" that came from his years heading up a NOAA team researching the spill's effects.

Another eureka came when they figured out which components of oil were toxic to fish. The culprits are from a class called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, or PAHs. Before the Exxon Valdez spill, they weren't known to be toxic to aquatic life. But after the spill, scientists discovered these compounds persist long after other parts of oil evaporate.

Even after these cascading discoveries, still no one knew how the oil was damaging the animals over the long term. One possibility was an impact on fish hearts: The heart is one of the first things that develop in a fish embryo.

A different team of NOAA scientists spent many years experimenting with fish in its laboratory. Researchers tried one novel experiment with fish to prove that small concentrations of PAHs were responsible for severely harming fish that looked outwardly normal.

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"We put them on a treadmill, in essence, for fish ... and tested how fast they could swim for a prolonged period, and the oil-exposed ones couldn't swim as fast for long," says developmental biologist John Incardona. "And we found that the shape of their hearts were different."

So now the researchers had a good idea which organ was harmed, the heart. But they still didn't know what the mechanism for damage was.

Then came the spring of 2010, when a big BP well spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days.

Because of all they knew from the damage from the Exxon-Valdez spill, scientists focused on fish likely to be spawning, such as the bluefin tuna. Marine biologists feared that the BP spill, like the Exxon Valdez, could have long-term effects, and fish eggs were top on their minds.

"Survivorship of the eggs are critical for future generations, especially on a severely depleted population of the bluefin that breed in the Gulf of Mexico," says Barbara Block, a marine biologist at Stanford University who studies tuna.

The NOAA researchers reached out to Block to help them answer a question that still puzzled them: What would cause a fish heart to slow down?

Block's lab used individual heart cells from tuna to show that PAHs in oil can interrupt the electrical signals that are essential for fish hearts to beat effectively. So far, the scientists think this can happen to embryos — and possibly to young fish — at low concentrations.

"What we're doing is applying the science of the Exxon Valdez and taking it into 21st-century methodologies," Block says.

Discovering the mechanism that makes oil toxic to fish is like a coroner pinning down a mysterious cause of death — but taking 25 years to do it. And, as in a criminal case, this knowledge could give scientists evidence to hold companies responsible for long-term damages no one ever knew oil spills were causing.

The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: A Report to the President (Executive Summary)

[National Response Team - May 1989]

Shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989, the 987-foot tank vessel Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. What followed was the largest oil spill in U.S. history. The oil slick has spread over 3,000 square miles and onto over 350 miles of beaches in Prince William Sound, one of the most pristine and magnificent natural areas in the country. Experts still are assessing the environmental and economic implications of the incident. The job of cleaning up the spill is under way, and although the initial response proceeded slowly, major steps have been taken.

The very large spill size, the remote location, and the character of the oil all tested spill preparedness and response capabilities. Government and industry plans, individually and collectively, proved to be wholly insufficient to control an oil spill of the magnitude of the Exxon Valdez incident. Initial industry efforts to get equipment on scene were unreasonably slow, and once deployed the equipment could not cope with the spill. Moreover, the various contingency plans did not refer to each other or establish a workable response command hierarchy. This resulted in confusion and delayed the cleanup.

Prepared by the National Response Team, this report was requested by the President and undertaken by Secretary of Transportation Samuel K. Skinner and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly. The report addresses the preparedness for, the response to, and early lessons learned from the Exxon Valdez incident. The President has also asked Secretary Skinner to coordinate the efforts of all federal agencies involved in the cleanup and Administrator Reilly to coordinate the long-term recovery of the affected areas of the Alaskan environment. These efforts are ongoing.

While it remains too early to draw final conclusions about many spill effects, the report addresses a number of important environmental, energy, economic, and health implications of the incident.

The lack of necessary preparedness for oil spills in Prince William Sound and the inadequate response actions that resulted mandate improvements in the way the nation plans for and reacts to oil spills of national significance.

This report starts the critical process of documenting these lessons and recommending needed changes to restore public confidence and improve our ability to plan for and respond to oil spills. The following points deserve special emphasis:

Prevention is the first line of defense. Avoidance of accidents remains the best way to assure the quality and health of our environment. We must continue to take steps to minimize the probability of oil spills.

Preparedness must be strengthened. Exxon was not prepared for a spill of this magnitude--nor were Alyeska, the State of Alaska, or the federal government. It is clear that the planning for and response to the Exxon Valdez incident was unequal to the task. Contingency planning in the future needs to incorporate realistic worst-case scenarios and to include adequate equipment and personnel to handle major spills. Adequate training in the techniques and limitations of oil spill removal is critical to the success of contingency planning. Organizational responsibilities must be clear, and personnel must be knowledgeable about their roles. Realistic exercises that fully test the response system must be undertaken regularly. The National Response Team is conducting a study of the adequacy of oil spill contingency plans throughout the country under the leadership of the Coast Guard.

Response capabilities must be enhanced to reduce environmental risk. Oil spills--even small ones--are difficult to clean up. Oil recovery rates are low. Both public and private research are needed to improve cleanup technology. Research should focus on mechanical, chemical, and biological means of combating oil spills. Decision-making processes for determining what technology to use should be streamlined, and strategies for the protection of natural resources need to be rethought.

Some oil spills may be inevitable. Oil is a vital resource that is inherently dangerous to use and transport. We therefore must balance environmental risks with the nation's energy requirements. The nation must recognize that there is no fail-safe prevention, preparedness, or response system. Technology and human organization can reduce the chance of accidents and mitigate their effects, but may not stop them from happening. This awareness makes it imperative that we work harder to establish environmental safeguards that reduce the risks associated with oil production and transportation. The infrequency of major oil spills in recent years contributed to the complacency that exacerbated the effect of the Exxon Valdez spill.

Legislation on liability and compensation is needed. The Exxon Valdez incident has highlighted many problems associated with liability and compensation when an oil spill occurs. Comprehensive U.S. oil spill liability and compensation legislation is necessary as soon as possible to address these concerns.

The United States should ratify the International Maritime Organization (IMO) 1984 Protocols. Domestic legislation on compensation and liability is needed to implement two IMO protocols related to compensation and liability. The United States should ratify the 1984 Protocols to the 1969 Civil Liability and the 1971 Fund Conventions. Expeditious ratification is essential to ensure international agreement on responsibilities associated with oil spills around the world.

Federal planning for oil spills must be improved. The National Contingency Plan (NCP) has helped to minimize environmental harm and health impacts from accidents. The NCP should, however, continue to be reviewed and improved in order to ensure that it activates the most effective response structure for releases or spills, particularly of great magnitude. Moreover, to the assure expeditious and well-coordinated response actions, it is critical that top officials--local, state, and federal--fully understand and be prepared to implement the contingency plans that are in place.

Studies of the long-term environmental and health effects must be undertaken expeditiously and carefully. Broad gauge and carefully structured environmental recovery efforts, including damage assessments, are critical to assure the eventual full restoration of Prince William Sound and other affected areas.

Executive Summary of The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: A Report to the President , from Samuel K. Skinner, Secretary, Department of Transportation, and William K. Reilly, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency, Prepared by the National Response Team, May 1989

An oil skimming operation works in a heavy slick near Latouche Island in the southwest end of Prince William Sound, Alaska, on April 1, 1989, a week after the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground.

• ENVIRONMENT

Exxon Valdez changed the oil industry forever—but new threats emerge

Thirty years ago, a spill in Alaska shocked the world. Tankers got safer, but they're not the only risks.

“My eyes were watering from the oil fumes even at 1,000 feet,” recalled Rick Steiner, who flew over the Exxon Valdez oil tanker on March 24, 1989, only hours after it had plowed into a cold-water reef. “Oil was all over the deck, and it was everywhere in the water,” said Steiner, who was the University of Alaska's marine advisor in the Prince William Sound region at the time.

The Exxon Valdez was the worst oil spill in U.S. waters until the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 . Within days oil from the Exxon Valdez spread some 1,300 miles along the coast of what was pristine wilderness. In the first days of the spill there was no oil recovery or clean-up equipment in the water, said Steiner, who is now a marine conservation consultant at the “Oasis Earth” project .

Eventually, massive clean-up efforts involving thousands of people were undertaken. The final death toll included 250,000 seabirds, almost 3,000 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon eggs. Populations of pacific herring, a cornerstone of the local fishing industry, collapsed. Fishermen went bankrupt .

It’s impossible to fully clean up an oil spill in the ocean, said Steiner, who’s been involved in many spills since 1989. And the impacts of these disasters can linger for decades. Thirty years later, local populations of killer whales and some seabirds in Prince William Sound have still not recovered, he said.

Some of the oil is still there, too. Recent sampling along the coast revealed pockets of oil buried four to eight inches under sand and gravel, often topped by stones. It’s likely to remain there for decades to come, according to a 2017 study by Jacqueline Michel, a geochemist specializing in oil spills, and president of Research Planning Inc.

A powerful storm or earthquake could potentially put that oil residue back into Prince William Sound, Michel said. However, digging up those residues to remove them would likely do more harm than good, she added.

Stricter laws reduce spills

In the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster, the U.S. Congress passed a law, in 1990, that required oil tankers in U.S. waters to have double hulls (unlike that fateful ship) and increased penalties for spills. Today, all of the world’s fleet of 12,000 to 14,000 tankers for oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and chemicals are double hulled.

Combined with tougher regulations and better navigation equipment, oil spills releasing more than seven tons from tankers plummeted from a high of 79 spills per year in the 1970s to six per year over the past decade, according to ITOPF , an association of shipowners that responds to oil spills.

The decline in large spills greater than 700 tons was even more dramatic, falling from 24.5 per year to just two per year.

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The biggest spills in history.

Perhaps surprisingly, given its notoriety and impact on the shipping industry, the Exxon Valdez spill was only the 36th worst tanker oil spill yet recorded. The biggest between 1970 and 2018 happened in 1979, off the coast of Tobago in the West Indies when the Atlantic Empress lost 287,000 tons of crude in a collision with another tanker. For comparison, the Valdez lost 37,000 tons. (There is roughly 305 gallons in a metric ton of oil.)

The worst tanker accident in the past 25 years occurred in January 2018, when two tankers collided off the coast of China. An Iranian oil tanker, the Sanchi, lost 117,000 tons of highly toxic natural gas condensate. None of Sanchi 's 32 crew members survived.

By far the biggest accidental spill into the ocean was from the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. At 35,000 feet, it was the deepest well ever drilled until the blow out that killed 11 workers. Over nearly 90 days the broken well pumped 680,000 tons (approximately 5 million barrels) of oil into the Gulf. The spill cost oil company BP an estimated $61.6 billion , and they still couldn’t contain or recover all the oil that was spilled, said Michel, who worked on the project to assess some of the impacts.

Future risk?

Marine oil spill containment and recovery technology improved tremendously after the Valdez, but not much has changed for at least the last decade, the experts say. Spills can be located faster and their movements modelled more accurately, but full containment and cleanup remains, impossible Michel said.

It can also be difficult to prevent an undersea oil well from leaking. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan destroyed an oil platform in the Gulf operated by Taylor Energy. It’s still leaking 15 years later. Taylor is reported to have spent over $400 million working alongside the U.S. Coast Guard to contain and clean up the spill, but it’s been an ongoing challenge.

More and more oil drilling is being done offshore in deepwater off the U.S. and around the world. Last year, the Trump administration proposed opening up far more offshore areas to drilling.

“Oil platform drilling in deeper water is the new paradigm of risk for oil spills in the marine environment,” said Michel.

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Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471 (2008)

EXXON SHIPPING CO. et al. v . BAKER et al.

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit

No. 07–219. Argued February 27, 2008—Decided June 25, 2008

In 1989, petitioners’ (collectively, Exxon) supertanker grounded on a reef off Alaska, spilling millions of gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. The accident occurred after the tanker’s captain, Joseph Hazelwood—who had a history of alcohol abuse and whose blood still had a high alcohol level 11 hours after the spill—inexplicably exited the bridge, leaving a tricky course correction to unlicensed subordinates. Exxon spent some $2.1 billion in cleanup efforts, pleaded guilty to criminal violations occasioning fines, settled a civil action by the United States and Alaska for at least $900 million, and paid another $303 million in voluntary payments to private parties. Other civil cases were consolidated into this one, brought against Exxon, Hazelwood, and others to recover economic losses suffered by respondents (hereinafter Baker), who depend on Prince William Sound for their livelihoods. At Phase I of the trial, the jury found Exxon and Hazelwood reckless (and thus potentially liable for punitive damages) under instructions providing that a corporation is responsible for the reckless acts of employees acting in a managerial capacity in the scope of their employment. In Phase II, the jury awarded $287 million in compensatory damages to some of the plaintiffs; others had settled their compensatory claims for $22.6 million. In Phase III, the jury awarded $5,000 in punitive damages against Hazelwood and $5 billion against Exxon. The Ninth Circuit upheld the Phase I jury instruction on corporate liability and ultimately remitted the punitive damages award against Exxon to $2.5 billion.

   1. Because the Court is equally divided on whether maritime law allows corporate liability for punitive damages based on the acts of managerial agents, it leaves the Ninth Circuit’s opinion undisturbed in this respect. Of course, this disposition is not precedential on the derivative liability question. See, e.g., Neil v. Biggers , 409 U. S. 188 , 192. Pp. 7–10.

   2. The Clean Water Act’s water pollution penalties, 33 U. S. C. §1321, do not preempt punitive-damages awards in maritime spill cases. Section 1321(b) protects “navigable waters … , adjoining shorelines, … [and] natural resources,” subject to a saving clause reserving “obligations … under any … law for damages to any … privately owned property resulting from [an oil] discharge,” §1321 (o). Exxon’s admission that the CWA does not displace compensatory remedies for the consequences of water pollution, even those for economic harms, leaves the company with the untenable claim that the CWA somehow preempts punitive damages, but not compensatory damages, for economic loss. Nothing in the statute points to that result, and the Court has rejected similar attempts to sever remedies from their causes of action, see Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U. S. 238 , 255–256. There is no clear indication of congressional intent to occupy the entire field of pollution remedies, nor is it likely that punitive damages for private harms will have any frustrating effect on the CWA’s remedial scheme. Pp. 10–15.

   3. The punitive damages award against Exxon was excessive as a matter of maritime common law. In the circumstances of this case, the award should be limited to an amount equal to compensatory damages. Pp. 15–42.

      (a) Although legal codes from ancient times through the Middle Ages called for multiple damages for certain especially harmful acts, modern Anglo-American punitive damages have their roots in 18th-century English law and became widely accepted in American courts by the mid-19th century. See, e.g., Day v. Woodworth , 13 How. 363, 371. Pp. 16–17.

      (b) The prevailing American rule limits punitive damages to cases of “enormity,” Day v. Woodworth , 13 How. 363, 371, in which a defendant’s conduct is outrageous, owing to gross negligence, willful, wanton, and reckless indifference for others’ rights, or even more deplorable behavior. The consensus today is that punitive damages are aimed at retribution and deterring harmful conduct. Pp. 17–21.

      (c) State regulation of punitive damages varies. A few States award them rarely, or not at all, and others permit them only when authorized by statute. Many States have imposed statutory limits on punitive awards, in the form of absolute monetary caps, a maximum ratio of punitive to compensatory damages, or, frequently, some combination of the two. Pp. 21–23.

      (d) American punitive damages have come under criticism in recent decades, but the most recent studies tend to undercut much of it. Although some studies show the dollar amounts of awards growing over time, even in real terms, most accounts show that the median ratio of punitive to compensatory awards remains less than 1:1. Nor do the data show a marked increase in the percentage of cases with punitive awards. The real problem is the stark unpredictability of punitive awards. Courts are concerned with fairness as consistency, and the available data suggest that the spread between high and low individual awards is unacceptable. The spread in state civil trials is great, and the outlier cases subject defendants to punitive damages that dwarf the corresponding compensatories. The distribution of judge-assessed awards is narrower, but still remarkable. These ranges might be acceptable if they resulted from efforts to reach a generally accepted optimal level of penalty and deterrence in cases involving a wide range of circumstances, but anecdotal evidence suggests that is not the case, see, e.g., Gore, supra, at 565, n. 8. Pp. 24–27.

      (e) This Court’s response to outlier punitive damages awards has thus far been confined by claims that state-court awards violated due process. See, e.g., State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell , 538 U. S. 408 , 425. In contrast, today’s enquiry arises under federal maritime jurisdiction and requires review of a jury award at the level of judge-made federal common law that precedes and should obviate any application of the constitutional standard. In this context, the unpredictability of high punitive awards is in tension with their punitive function because of the implication of unfairness that an eccentrically high punitive verdict carries. A penalty should be reasonably predictable in its severity, so that even Holmes’s “bad man” can look ahead with some ability to know what the stakes are in choosing one course of action or another. And a penalty scheme ought to threaten defendants with a fair probability of suffering in like degree for like damage. Cf. Koon v. United States , 518 U. S. 81 , 113. Pp. 28–29.

      (f) The Court considers three approaches, one verbal and two quantitative, to arrive at a standard for assessing maritime punitive damages. Pp. 29–42.

         (i) The Court is skeptical that verbal formulations are the best insurance against unpredictable outlier punitive awards, in light of its experience with attempts to produce consistency in the analogous business of criminal sentencing. Pp. 29–32.

         (ii) Thus, the Court looks to quantified limits. The option of setting a hard-dollar punitive cap, however, is rejected because there is no “standard” tort or contract injury, making it difficult to settle upon a particular dollar figure as appropriate across the board; and because a judicially selected dollar cap would carry the serious drawback that the issue might not return to the docket before there was a need to revisit the figure selected. Pp. 32–39.

         (iii) The more promising alternative is to peg punitive awards to compensatory damages using a ratio or maximum multiple. This is the model in many States and in analogous federal statutes allowing multiple damages. The question is what ratio is most appropriate. An acceptable standard can be found in the studies showing the median ratio of punitive to compensatory awards. Those studies reflect the judgments of juries and judges in thousands of cases as to what punitive awards were appropriate in circumstances reflecting the most down to the least blameworthy conduct, from malice and avarice to recklessness to gross negligence. The data in question put the median ratio for the entire gamut at less than 1:1, meaning that the compensatory award exceeds the punitive award in most cases. In a well-functioning system, awards at or below the median would roughly express jurors’ sense of reasonable penalties in cases like this one that have no earmarks of exceptional blameworthiness. Accordingly, the Court finds that a 1:1 ratio is a fair upper limit in such maritime cases. Pp. 39–42.

         (iv) Applying this standard to the present case, the Court takes for granted the District Court’s calculation of the total relevant compensatory damages at $507.5 million. A punitive-to-compensatory ratio of 1:1 thus yields maximum punitive damages in that amount. P. 42.

472 F. 3d 600 and 490 F. 3d 1066, vacated and remanded.

   Souter, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined, and in which Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined, as to Parts I, II, and III. Scalia, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Thomas, J., joined. Stevens, J., Ginsburg, J., and Breyer, J., filed opinions concurring in part and dissenting in part. Alito, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

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Slick Science: The toxic legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

On a late March evening in 1989, the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker owned by the Exxon Shipping Company, spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. At the time, it was the largest single oil spill in U.S. waters. It covered 1,300 miles of coastline and killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters, seals and whales.  The world thought that was the end of the story. But there’s so much more to what happened that night in Alaska. Our newest podcast reinvestigates the Exxon Valdez spill 35 years later, bringing new voices, new information and new stories to one of history’s most infamous environmental disasters.   With a background in health, science, and climate reporting, host Gordon Katic immerses listeners into one of the darkest days in marine history.  We hear from scientists and fishers who form unlikely friendships and unfold the trauma of how an oil spill impacts the environment, economy, and people as they fight against Big Oil. Slick Science: The toxic legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill is a collaboration between Cited Podcast and Canada’s National Observer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Irrational Juries

Exxon admitted it had spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Prince William Sound, but it didn’t believe the mistake warranted punitive damages.  In this final episode of Slick Science, we learn how corporations like Exxon fight back with research they fund. Host Gordon Katic digs through the notes of an environmental sociologist who worked on Exxon-funded research.  We also hear perspectives from Exxon-funded research arguing against juries, especially in the context of punitive damages.  With a better understanding of corporations and their hand in academia, the shocking final verdict on the Exxon Valdez oil spill starts to make sense. Slick Science: The toxic legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill is a collaboration between Cited Podcast and Canada’s National Observer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

12 Angry Alaskans

Last time on Slick Science, we heard first-hand accounts of life after a monumental oil spill. But what happens after marine life dies and beaches are left covered with oil? Who is responsible for footing the cleanup bill? How much? And who decides?  In this episode, we get to be a fly on the wall of a courtroom where 12 ordinary Alaskans learn why a tanker the size of three football fields crashed and decide whether to punish Exxon for spilling millions of gallons of oil in Prince William Sound. As jurors and lawyers navigate the trial, questions are raised about the wisdom of having a jury hear this kind of case. Jurors aren’t experts and don’t have the scientific or economic expertise to muddle through something so big. So why would they be asked to decide this outcome? Slick Science: The toxic legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill is a collaboration between Cited Podcast and Canada’s National Observer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alaskan Nightmare

The city of Valdez, Alaska, is nestled in a deep fjord surrounded by mountains. Tourists come to the area to see the glaciers, fish in the cold mountain-fed water and visit the ice caves. The city is also a hub for oil tankers who come up the long fjord to the marine terminal to fill cargo tanks bigger than cathedrals with oil from the Trans-Alaska pipeline.    On March 23rd, 1989, a big new tanker owned by the oil giant Exxon was in one of the loading berths at the terminal. Getting into the terminal and filling the cargo tanks takes a full day. At nine p.m., the tanker, carrying more than a million barrels of oil, pulled away from the berth and headed to Long Beach, California.  For an oil tanker, it was a pretty ordinary journey down the fjord through Prince Edward Sound to the Pacific Ocean. It had been done more than 8,000 times since oil began flowing through the Trans-Alaska pipeline.   But this time, just three hours after leaving the marine terminal, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker got into trouble. This trouble would forever change the lives of the hundreds of residents of Prince William Sound.  Slick Science: The toxic legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill is a collaboration between Cited Podcast and Canada’s National Observer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Burning Tanker in Red Sea Threatens Disaster Worse Than Exxon Valdez

Published Aug 25, 2024 3:01 PM by The Maritime Executive

Two days after Houthi forces blew up the cargo tanks of the Greek-owned Suezmax Sounion , the flames emerging from the vessel's deck were still visible from space, based on imagery from the EU's Sentinel satellite system. Western governments have warned that the terrorist group's action could cause a devastating oil spill in the Red Sea, up to four times larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster - with serious consequences for the environment and for subsistence fisheries. 

New satellite imagery from @ESA_EO Sentinel-2 shows burning oil tanker SOUNION at the Red Sea. Unclear how much oil is spill due to sun glint on the water. pic.twitter.com/volel0BKmr — Wim Zwijnenburg (@wammezz) August 25, 2024

"While the crew has been evacuated, the Houthis appear determined to sink the ship and its cargo into the sea," said the U.S. State Department in a statement. "Through these attacks, the Houthis have made clear they are willing to destroy the fishing industry and regional ecosystems that Yemenis and other communities in the region rely on for their livelihoods, just as they have undermined the delivery of vital humanitarian aid to the region through their reckless attacks."

The European Union's naval mission in the Red Sea, EUNAVFOR Aspides, echoed these concerns. 

"This situation underlines that these kinds of attacks pose not only a threat against the freedom of navigation but also to the lives of seafarers, the environment, and subsequently the life of all citizens living in that region," the EU mission said in a statement. 

Before the blast, multiple Houthi observers aimed video cameras at the vessel from different angles (below). Based on their footage, the tanker was wracked by three simultaneous explosions, and three fireballs erupted from the main deck level upwards. The pattern suggests that after they disabled  the Sounion , the Houthi attackers waited for Western defenders to leave, then boarded the tanker, placed explosive charges on deck, and recorded the ensuing detonation for public release - as they have done previously . 

????? ?????? ?????? ??????? ??????? ??????? ????????? SOUNION ?? ????? ?????? ????? ???? ?????? ??????? ??? ??????? ???? ??? ?????? ??? ????? ?????? ???????. pic.twitter.com/nvjHU4SFG2 — ?????? ???? ???? (@army21ye) August 23, 2024

A spokesman for Houthi forces did not address potential environmental harm from the attack, and said only that the vessel was targeted because of the shipowner's alleged decision to continue sending vessels to Israeli seaports. The Houthi militia has declared a naval blockade on Israeli-affiliated shipping because of the ongoing military operation in Gaza, though it has previously attacked vessels without any clear Israeli nexus - including vessels linked to Houthi allies. 

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Yemen: US warns tanker hit by Houthis could cause largest ship oil spill in history

The US Pentagon has warned that an oil tanker attacked by Yemen’s Houthis last week is still on fire and could be leaking oil into the Red Sea, threatening an ecological disaster.

Last week the group targeted the Greek-flagged crude oil tanker Sounion with three projectiles, sparking a fire and disabling the engine. 

The Sounion's crew were rescued by a French naval vessel on Thursday after drifting for a day 77 nautical miles west of the port of Hodeidah.

On Friday the group, which controls most of Yemen and says its attacks are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, posted a video purporting to show them setting the ship alight.

The EU's Aspides task force, an international naval force, said in a statement on X that there was no sign of fire on board the ship when the crew were rescued.

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The tanker is carrying more than 150,000 tonnes of crude oil. Should a spill occur, it could be among the largest from a ship in recorded history.  

The US State Department warned in a statement on Saturday that the potential spill could be four times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, when 257,000 barrels of oil leaked off the coast of Alaska.

According to  Aspides,  the EU military taskforce against the Houthis, the wreckage risks a “severe ecological disaster”.

Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Maj Gen Patrick Ryder said on Tuesday that a third party had sent two tugboats to salvage the wreck but had been deterred by Houthi threats to attack them.

Ryder condemned the attacks as “reckless acts of terrorism” which “imperil the vibrant maritime ecosystem in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the Houthis’ own back yard,” adding that the US military was working with partners in the region to mitigate any environmental impact.

Yemen's Ansar Allah group, known as the Houthis, started targeting any ship they deemed Israel-linked traversing the Red Sea in October 2023, vowing not to stop until Israel ends its war on Gaza.

Some ships with no relation to Israel have also been targeted over recent months.

While the group has so far sunk two ships - the R ubymar attacked in February and the Greek-flagged Tutor which was targeted in June - the Sounion attack marks the first time the fighters have intentionally blown up an abandoned ship.

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Salvagers abandon burning oil tanker at risk of spill 4X the size of Exxon Valdez

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Salvagers abandoned an initial effort to tow away a burning oil tanker in the Red Sea targeted by  Yemen’s Houthi rebels  as it “was not safe to proceed,” a European Union naval mission said Tuesday, leaving the Sounion stranded and its 1 million barrels of oil at risk of spilling.

While a major spill has yet to occur, the incident threatens to become one of the worst yet in the Iranian-backed rebels’ campaign that has disrupted the $1 trillion in goods that pass through the Red Sea each year over the  Israel-Hamas war  in the Gaza Strip. It also has halted some aid shipments to conflict-ravaged Sudan and Yemen.

“The private companies responsible for the salvage operation have concluded that the conditions were not met to conduct the towing operation and that it was not safe to proceed,” the EU’s Operation Aspides mission said, without elaborating. “Alternative solutions are now being explored by the private companies.”

The EU mission did not respond to questions from The Associated Press about the announcement. The safety issue could be the fire burning aboard the vessel. Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC taken Tuesday afternoon and analyzed by the AP showed the Sounion still ablaze.

The U.S. State Department has warned a spill from the Sounion could be “four times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster” in 1989 off Alaska.

Meanwhile, there’s the threat of attacks by the Houthis,  who on Monday targeted two other oil tankers traveling through the Red Sea . The Houthis have suggested they’ll allow a salvage operation to take place, but critics say the rebels have  used the threat of an environmental disaster previously involving another oil tanker off Yemen  to extract concessions from the international community.

The Houthis initially attacked the Greek-flagged Sounion tanker on Aug. 21 with small arms fire, projectiles and a drone boat. A French destroyer operating as part of Operation Aspides rescued its crew of 25 Filipinos and Russians, as well as four private security personnel, after they abandoned the vessel and took them to nearby Djibouti.

Last week, the Houthis released footage showing  they planted explosives on board the Sounion  and ignited them in a propaganda video, something the rebels have done before in their campaign.

The Houthis have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October. They  seized one vessel  and  sank two in the campaign  that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels as well.

The rebels maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the U.K. to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.

There no American vessels known to be in the Red Sea at the moment as the EU mission has taken charge after the Sounion attack. A U.S. defense official, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss information not made public, said the American military has not been asked and has no role in the cleanup or the towing of the Sounion.

The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower recently served a monthslong deployment in the Red Sea, facing the most intense, continuous combat  the U.S. Navy has been seen since World War II while fighting against the Houthis .

Two U.S. aircraft carriers, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Abraham Lincoln, along with their carrier groups, are in the Gulf of Oman to counter a threatened Iranian retaliation against Israel over  the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran .

The Houthis’ attacks likely will continue until there’s a cease-fire in Gaza, warned Matthew Bey, a senior analyst at the RANE Group, a risk consultancy. Even then, there’s a risk that the rebels continue the attacks.

“The Houthis have learned quite a bit from what they’ve been doing over the last year — it’s been a very significant recruiting boon for them,” Bey told the AP. “I think there are a lot of incentives for them to target shipping in the future because they’ve learned that they can be very successful in that. It brings in the West, which is kind of the enemy that they want to fight to some degree as well.”

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