Shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. Ecological systems were threatened, and the lives and livelihood of area residents were severely disrupted. For the tanker’s owner, New York–based Exxon Corporation, the effects were profound.

How did such a tragedy occur? Opinions vary considerably. One oil company executive put it this way: “It’s simple. A boat hit a rock.” On the other hand, the evidence shows a much more complex picture of human and technical errors.

At the time of the grounding, the vessel had departed from normal shipping lanes to avoid ice in the water and had failed to make a corrective turn in time to avoid the submerged reef. The ship was piloted by third mate Gregory Cousins, who did not hold a required license; the captain, Joseph Hazelwood, was in his quarters. Hazelwood, whose driver’s license was at the time suspended for driving while intoxicated, later failed a sobriety test. When the Trans-Alaska pipeline was originally opened, strict traffic lanes were established in the Sound to guarantee safe tanker passage.

But, in recent years, disintegration of the Columbia Glacier had filled the lanes with ice. To avoid slowing down to dodge icebergs—thereby delaying the oil’s delivery to market—tanker captains routinely moved out of the shipping lanes.

Onshore, no one was keeping watch.

Although the U.S. Coast Guard was charged with monitoring vessels through Prince William Sound, in fact its outdated radar system did not reliably track vessels as far out as Bligh Reef. An earlier proposal to upgrade the radar system had been rejected as too expensive. And the Coast Guard’s oversight, to say the least, was lax: at the time of the Valdez grounding, the only radar man on duty had stepped out for a cup of coffee.

Other corners had also been cut. The Coast Guard had reduced the use of specially trained harbor pilots to guide tankers out of the Sound and had withdrawn a proposal for tugboat escorts. Rules, such as those governing the number of crew members on the bridge, were not enforced.

The response to the accident was also fraught with difficulties. Alyeska, the consortium of oil companies that built and operate the Trans-Alaska pipeline, is responsible for cleaning up oil spills that occur in Prince William Sound. At the time of the accident, Alyeska’s contingency plan promised to reach a stricken vessel within five and a half hours and to recover half of a 200,000-barrel spill within seventy-two hours, yet when the event occurred, Alyeska’s plan was revealed, as Alaska’s commissioner for energy conservation later put it, as “the greatest work of maritime fiction since Moby Dick.” The cleanup crew had no instructions, the barge was in dry dock for repairs, needed boom and skimmers were buried under tons of other equipment in a warehouse, and lightering supplies were lost under a snowdrift.

Alyeska did not even reach the Valdez until almost twelve hours after the accident and in the first three days was able to pick up only 3,000 barrels of oil—2% of what it had promised. Incredibly, a group of local fishermen, later dubbed the “mosquito fleet,” managed to retrieve more oil with their fishing boats and five-gallon buckets than did Alyeska with all its money and equipment. When Alyeska’s cleanup collapsed, a response effort had to be hastily juryrigged by Exxon and the federal and state governments. Federal law called for an interagency team effort in which Exxon was responsible for cleaning up the oil, and different federal agencies were responsible variously for providing scientific advice, protecting the parks, and safeguarding birds and animals. The Coast Guard and Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation were supposed to supervise the whole effort, yet no established procedures existed for bringing these organizations together into a working crisis management teamunder unified leadership.

The result was a response effort “paralyzed by indecision, a struggle over authority, and vastly different and conflicting expectations as to which measures would work.”...........

Questions:-

1. Who was responsible for the accident?
2. What were the responsibilities of the company, the government authorities, and the employees of the company, that were not properly discharged?
3. Should Exxon abide by the Valdez Principles?
4. Could a better code of conduct have prevented this accident?
5. If Exxon had known, before the accident, about the captain’s alcohol problem, what actions should have been taken, if any?