Ornella Regalado E.

Ingeniera en Alimentos-ESPOL

SUMARY OF VIDEO EXXON-VALDEZ

Every day many ships crossing the oceans loading large volumes of oil. Oil companies need permits to transport its oil by all routes. Alyeska is a consortium of oil companies like Exxon, Mobil, Phillips, among others. They are allowed to transport oil and gas from Alaska to other parts of the world. To transport must have a contingency plan in case of an oil spill, a few years ago that plan was not as rigorous or was lacking in certain areas. On March 24, 1980 Exxon-Valdez oil tanker struck an iceberg. The accident happened on a holiday and was located in Alaska. That oil spill was one of the largest in recorded history. There are many reasons why the accident happened. Among them is the fact that the ship's captain and some of the crew were drunk, at the time of the accident was in charge of the ship's third officer. The ship's captain had a history of alcoholism and had been revoked license so during the accident had no license enabled. Another reason was that the normal route navigation was changed in a direction not set; the change of address was not reported so the ship could not be seen by radar and put on notice of the risks to the surf there. Another reason was that during the crash was not taken into account that the ignition warning light was red in the cockpit that the ship was making contact with ice. Regarding impacts are some classified in direct and non-direct. Direct impacts have gas emission, bad odors, pollution of water and animals deaths. Insomuch as non-direct impacts have the increase of oil price, city tourism decreases, and bad economy for people who work as fishers, also health of the population may be affected in the long term. Another non-direct impact that should be considered may be the rising price of fish because the spill came to the shores where the fish incubated. To control the oil spill there was many methods that were wanted to be used. One of them was the use of chemical dispersants. The chemical dispersants function as a kind of detergent on grease, with the dissipation of concentrated oil at sea. The fish breathe all components of the dispersing chemicals and hydrocarbons remaining in them. Also another problem with the dispersants was the amount of them; it was less than what was needed. Another method was to place barriers around the islands and control the spread of the spill and save fish hatchery areas. Another solution that would make was to burn the oil, but this was not as profitable for the spill reached the coast. Combustion was carried out in a part of the affected areas but was bad consequences

The accident was so catastrophic for a few reasons. Among them are: the first one, that there was contradictions between responsible and their functions, nobody was doing anything concrete while oil still spilling. In second place, is the contingency plan was implemented and accepted by the laws or state environmental agencies to run but the team did not exist. They had a contingency plan but the implementation was very slow. They did not have a rigorous plan to follow, never knew they had to do, and did not want to take responsibility because it implied pay expenses.