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Prince William Sound 20 years later In the years since Exxon Valdez oil spill prevention and response capabilities have increased vastly and become more sophisticated Alan Bailey Petroleum News
The grounding of the tanker Exxon Valdez on March 24, 1989, and the subsequent unleashing of nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine waters of Alaska’s Prince William Sound has gone down in history as one of the more noteworthy manmade environmental disasters.
But in the aftermath of the accident, a recognition of complacency over the possibility of an oil spill involving the Valdez terminal or its tanker traffic, coupled with a realization that contingency arrangements for a spill had been woefully inadequate, triggered new federal and state legislation, heightened regulatory oversight and caused a complete rethink of oil spill prevention and response in the region.
The tanker had run aground on Bligh Reef, at the eastern end of the sound, after straying from the tanker route that runs between Valdez Narrows, at the mouth of Port Valdez, to Hinchinbrook Entrance, the broad channel that passes from Prince William Sound into the Gulf of Alaska. At the Valdez Marine Terminal in Port Valdez tankers fill up with North Slope crude oil from the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. The tankers transit the eastern end of the sound before heading south through the gulf to deliver their cargos to the U.S. West Coast.
But how have lessons learned from the Exxon Valdez disaster been applied to this busy tanker route?
On Feb. 2 at the Alaska Forum on the Environment Michael Levshakov, public relations coordinator for Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., the operator of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and Valdez Marine Terminal, described how oil spill prevention and response in Valdez and Prince William Sound have been bolstered over the past 20 years.
SERVS For a visitor to Valdez harbor, perhaps one of the more visible consequences of change since 1989 is the large, block-shaped building that serves as headquarters of the Ship Escort/Response Vessel System, an organization formed shortly after the Exxon Valdez disaster as part of APSC. SERVS, as the organization is generally known, provides tug escort services for tankers plying the route to and from Valdez; SERVS also provides oil spill response services for the oil terminal and for the shippers that operate the tankers.
A key priority for SERVS and other organizations has been prevention of another tanker accident, Levshakov said.
In 1989 APSC had three escort vessels and one of these vessels would escort a tanker as it plied the Valdez Port and the narrows at the port entrance, with the escort service ending off Rocky Point, a promontory a few miles southwest of the narrows, Levshakov said.
Nowadays SERVS operates an escort fleet consisting of five state-of-the-art tugs — two 10,192-horsepower enhanced tractor tugs, and three 10,200-horsepower prevention-response tugs — all of which have drive systems that enable great maneuverability.
Two tugs escort each tanker, with one tug tethered to the tanker’s stern, ready to drag the tanker out of harm’s way should some emergency arise. And the tethered tug accompanies the tanker all the way out to Hinchinbrook Entrance, rather than just to Rocky Point. In addition, a professional pilot on the tanker’s bridge helps the tanker crew negotiate the route between Valdez and the Bligh Reef area.
Coast guard The U.S. Coast Guard has also beefed up its operations, Levshakov said.
In 1989 a single USCG watch person monitored tanker traffic using a radar system that scanned Port Valdez, the Valdez Narrows and the Valdez Arm of Prince William Sound, as far as Rocky Point. Tracking vessel positions and movements outside of radar coverage required ship-to-shore radio communications.
“The rest of Prince William Sound relied upon radio check-ins and plotting, with one watch keeping track of all that,” Levshakov said.
Since those days, the coast guard has upped the watch to two people, while also reducing the number of hours that each person remains on duty, Captain Mark Hamilton, USCG captain of the port for western Alaska, told the forum. And information available to the coast guard has vastly improved, with data from an automatic ship identification system overlaid on radar plots, and with ice coverage radar providing a picture of ice drifting out from the nearby Columbia Glacier.
There is now a system of marine speed limits in the region. In addition, the coast guard maintains radio contact with tankers and will alert a tanker crew if the tanker starts to stray off course, Hamilton said.
“There’s also a (USCG) chief of the vessel tracking system, whose primary duty is to ensure that the two watch standers are able to carry out their duties without being distracted,” Levshakov said.
A SERVS control room also maintains contact with vessels in Prince William Sound, while using the same types of automatic vessel identification system and ice coverage radar as the coast guard to monitor the situation out on the water, Levshakov said.
Double-hulled tankers The Oil Pollution Act of 1990, a piece of federal legislation enacted as a direct consequence of the Exxon Valdez disaster, mandated the phasing in of double-hulled tankers, to replace the single-hulled design of vessels such as the Exxon Valdez. By preventing leakage of oil if just the outer hull is breached, the introduction of double-hulled designs substantially reduces the oil spill risk if a tanker runs aground or hits a rock.
Of the 17 tankers that operate in and out of Valdez, 16 now have either double hulls or double bottoms, Levshakov said. The last single-hulled tanker is slated to leave the system in early 2010.
Nine of the tankers also have duplicate rudder and propulsion systems, to guard against an equipment failure, Levshakov said.
And other precautions relating to tanker operation include strict alcohol screening for captains and officers, as well as operational restrictions relating to weather and sea conditions.
Spill response But what if the worst were to happen and oil is spilled?
The escort tugs carry skimmers and boom, ready to swing into action if necessary. However, the equipment on the tugs represents just a tiny portion of a vast inventory of spill response equipment now staged in Valdez and at various sites across Prince William Sound.
SERVS now has nearly 50 miles of various types of boom, 108 skimmers providing a total of 59,000 barrels per hour of oil recovery capacity and nine oil recovery barges with a total of 900,000 barrels of on-water storage capacity, Levshakov said. Tugs and response barges provide mobile platforms for deploying equipment to a response site.
That all compares with the one deck barge, three skimmers, 2.5 miles of boom and about 5,000 barrels of on-water storage available out of Valdez in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef, Levshakov said.
And nowadays, in addition to storing response equipment in Valdez, SERVS stages equipment at five salmon hatcheries and five remotely located response sites scattered across the Prince William Sound region. This remote staging of equipment would save time in moving boom, skimmers and other pieces of kit to sensitive sites after an oil spill incident. And numerous sites with high environmental sensitivity have pre-specified oil spill response plans.
Fishing vessel program Since 1989 SERVS has established a fishing vessel program that has enrolled more than 350 vessels under contract, to assist with operations such as on-water oil recovery, were an oil spill to occur. More than 200 of the contracted fishing vessels are based in Prince William Sound. SERVS runs fishing vessel training twice a year.
In addition to the SERVS use of local fishing vessels, the formation of the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council has ensured local community involvement in decisions and arrangement for oil spill prevention and response.
And the oil spill response training and organizational arrangements have also been vastly improved since 1989. The use of the Incident Command System — a system of standard crisis response organizational protocols and procedures — by all organizations potentially involved in mounting a Valdez or Prince William Sound response, including the oil shippers, USCG and the State of Alaska, ensures a common understanding of roles, responsibilities and procedures.
And these various organizations participate in major annual oil spill drills, typically involving hundreds of people. SERVS also periodically tests the deployment of equipment at remote sites such as salmon hatcheries, Levshakov said.
But Hamilton emphasized that the oil spill prevention and response capabilities that now exist, 20 years after the Exxon Valdez, result from a group effort, involving multiple organizations and with citizen involvement.
The involvement of the local communities is “incredibly important,” he said.
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