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Ten years after VECO executives look back at the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill cleanup:
A logistics challenge, an economic shot in the arm and a disaster whose lasting damage, they say, is not to the environment Jim Prevost PNA Contributing Writer
On a flat-calm Friday morning 10 years ago in March, the tanker Exxon Valdez lay hard and fast upon Bligh Reef, where she had been since just after midnight. At her side a thick, black gunk oozed to the surface in waves that folded one upon the other at the hull before spreading out across the water’s mirror surface.
In Anchorage, 100 miles to the west, rush-hour radio reports of the grounding set in motion the first stirrings of what would develop into the largest peacetime logistics operation in U.S. history.
Pete Leathard, president of VECO Corp., was driving to his Anchorage office on March 24, 1989, when he heard on the radio that a tanker had hit the rocks.
Chief Executive Bill Allen was at the office when Leathard arrived, but hadn’t heard about the disaster.
“I told him about it,” Leathard said, “and he called to see if it was real or not, and asked if they needed any help. They said yes.”
Allen had founded VECO in 1968 as an oil field service company. The firm specialized in operations, some drilling
and construction, mainly in the oil fields, but also in the mining industry.
Following an oil spill in Cook Inlet in 1987, area oil transporters and producers had formed the Cook Inlet Response Organization and hired VECO to furnish trained people to respond to spills.
By the end of the day on March 24, VECO had flown all 60 of its trained oil spill response technicians from Kenai to Valdez, and by Sunday had a full management staff on site working closely with Exxon. Stabilizing the tanker “In the early stages, Exxon had nobody here,” Leathard said. “So we acted without any contract, as sort of their vehicle to make some things happen.”
The oil company’s main concern at first was stabilizing the tanker, which still held two thirds of its oil, and then bringing another tanker alongside to off-load the remaining crude. At that point, nothing was being done about the oil in the water.
“They just said, ‘Do what you can, and we’ll cover you for it,’ so we started to mobilize and to do stuff,” Leathard said.
Exxon wanted permission from the state to apply chemical dispersing agents to the oil slick, but the state didn’t want to take responsibility, Allen said.
Exxon asked Allen to try to persuade Gov. Steve Cowper to authorize it.
“I told him, ‘We’re going to have a hell of a mess if you don’t,’” Allen said. “So, finally, he said OK. But, about the time he said OK, the wind came up. It blew so hard, it blew the roof off the control tower at Valdez. And that spread the oil everywhere.”
Allen and Leathard agree that if dispersants had been sprayed on the slick while the weather was calm, the wave action that followed would have broken up and dispersed the oil and subsequent damage would have been considerably less.
Instead, after the storm, conditions went back to flat calm, with the bright sun weathering off the crude’s light ends, leaving a thick mat of oil fouling beaches throughout the sound.
The natural flushing action carried the slick out of Prince William Sound to the southwest, where it contaminated beaches on the lower Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak and the Alaska Peninsula. The logistics In addition to stabilizing and off-loading the tanker, Exxon took on the on-water cleanup chores and left VECO in charge of cleaning up what had hit the beaches — an undertaking that required enormous resources.
“People don’t realize that Prince William Sound is really remote,” Leathard said. “Where the action occurred, where the oil was, you’d send a boat out, it would spend about an hour down there, and then it would come back. That was a full day. As it spread down around the sound, we had boats out where they were out of contact.”
To establish a communications network, VECO established a system of radio repeater stations on mountain tops around the sound.
They also leased and purchased tour boats and fishing boats, barges, landing craft and pleasure craft for use as work platforms, decontamination stations and living quarters. Exxon and VECO agreed that they had to provide places for people to live out on the water, next to the spill, if they were going to accomplish anything.
“In making that decision, we were also agreeing that you’ve got to have food, you’ve got to have water and take care of sewage,” Leathard said. “Anything you clean up you have to be able to dispose of. The logistics of all that just mounted tremendously. One of the biggest deals about the oil spill was supporting the people you brought in to deal with it. For instance, you couldn’t just have people (relieving themselves) on the beach. You had to have porta-potties on the beach in order to have people there.”
Another important decision for Alaska was the determination that local people impacted by the spill would benefit from the money spent on its cleanup. Local people would be hired, local suppliers would used, and local boats would be utilized. VECO hired Norcon Inc. as a subcontractor to provide union workers on shore supporting the cleanup effort while VECO, with non-union personnel, worked offshore. Exxon’s treatment “wrong” To get the project under way, hiring centers were quickly set up in the local communities. Allen and other VECO people played a major role in acting as front people in dealing with the communities, opening offices in front of the spill, putting people on the payroll and providing food.
“Exxon went overboard, in giving us the authority to do that, to try and make sure that as much of the impact as possible was mitigated,” Leathard said.
“They went full-bore with everything,” Allen said, “then got sued for $5 billion. The next time it happens — it probably never will again, but — why would a company come in and do what Exxon did, when you’re going to turn around and get hit like that?”
“They won’t,” Leathard agreed.
While stopping short of accusing anyone of misrepresenting facts in the matter, Leathard said there was definitely a twist put on information regarding the spill, in order to maximize the apparent damages done to the state and make more money from the oil giant after the spill.
“I think that was wrong,” he said.
Leathard pointed out that Exxon made sure VECO hired all the Alaskans they could hire. Furthermore, all materials and supplies were to be bought through vendors in Alaska. VECO spent nearly $300 million in the first three months.
“Even the rubber products,” he said. “We emptied the stores, going for rubber boots and clothing, because everybody had to be protected to work on the beaches.”
Many items were ordered to be manufactured in China. Others were imported from France and other countries around the world, Leathard said, but it all came back through Alaska suppliers. The economic impact The commercial impacts of the cleanup benefited a sluggish Alaska economy. Employment increased throughout the state. As many as 125 communities had residents employed on the cleanup. By summer the state’s unemployment rate dropped to its lowest level since pipeline days.
At the project’s peak, more than 2,000 vessels were leased to Exxon and VECO.
“Just about everybody in the fishing industry who had a boat for hire got hired,” Leathard said. “Their boats got paid for.”
Eventually 17,000 people owed their jobs to the oil spill. At the high point of the cleanup effort, there were 3,000 VECO and Norcon personnel directly involved in shoreline operations, with 9,000 more supporting the undertaking.
Over the life of the project, Exxon spent more than $2 billion, about half funneled through VECO. About 90 percent of the money spent by VECO on the cleanup was spent in Alaska.
The spill resulted in the largest single-season impact on the Railbelt economy since pipeline construction.
Banks reported large increases in third-quarter deposits. Car dealerships reported a 30 percent increase in sales over the previous year. The Alaska Housing Finance Corp. loan delinquency rate fell nearly in half. Alaska business bankruptcy rates fell by more than 60 percent.
These benefits came about at a cost that is still being assessed and, in some quarters, hotly debated. Leathard is doubtful about any long-term environmental effects.
“There was damage immediately — there’s no question. But as far as long-lasting damage, I don’t think it’s there,” he said.
He has no doubt, however, that Exxon was treated unfairly after the spill. Accidents happen, he said, and nobody seriously thinks Exxon ran their ship aground on purpose.
“I have no love for Exxon. Hell, they’re a monster corporation. But I just think the system is wrong, when you do that.”
The lasting damage from the spill, as Leathard sees it, is the damage to the image of the state caused by Exxon’s shabby treatment. He sees a different scenario if a like event should ever take place here.
“I don’t think an Exxon will do it again,” He said. “I think they’ll say, ‘Hell — I might as well save my money, do the minimal I can, put on a good show.’ And, boy, they will. They’ll spend more money on publicity than on mitigating the damage, as a result of what’s happened since.” Attitudes have changed Allen said the atmosphere is much more positive today. People look at oil companies differently than they did at the time of the spill. Also, he said, his assistance in getting Gov. Tony Knowles acquainted with oil industry leaders shortly after Knowles’ election has worked out well, and the Legislature has changed its view of the oil industry.
“So, the whole picture has changed,” Allen said. “Right now, I think that we need to do everything we can to keep the atmosphere that way, and to even encourage it more.”
Allen said he wasn’t discouraged by the current low prices for Alaskan crude, or subsequent layoffs and cutbacks by BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. He said that if the attitude is kept positive, oil will start back.
“It may take two or three years, but it’ll come back,” Allen said, “and Alaska is going to be a good place to be for a long time.”
Next month, stories from VECO people who were on scene on the beaches and in support of “the largest peacetime gathering of equipment and personnel in United States history.”
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