Learning From Disasters: Twenty-One Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Will Reactions to the Deepwater Horizon Blowout Finally Address the Systemic Flaws Revealed in Alaska?

• Date: 01 November 2010

11-2010 NEWS & ANALYSIS 40 ELR 11041

Twenty-one years a go, after the calamitous Exxon

Valdez oil spill (EVOS) in Alaska’s Prince William

Sound, the pervasive systemic aws—that, according

to the State of Alaska Oil Spill Commission, had made a

major calamity not just possible but probable1—were largely

cloaked behind the gure of a captain with a drink ing prob-

lem. is time around, after suering a nother horric oil

incident—this one a lmost 20 times larger than the Exxon

Valdez spill2—t he question for national energy law and policy

is whether, this time around, we’ll acknowledge and imple-

ment the hard systemic lessons largely avoided two dec ades

ago. e Deepwater Horizon tragedy will be a doubly disas-

trous occasion if it does not produce systemic changes for the

future, as the Exxon Valdez markedly failed to do. As W hite

House Chief of Sta Rahm Emanuel said in another context,

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”3

1. See State of Alaska Oil Spill Commission’s Reports and Appendices, February

1990, available at www.arlis.org/vol2/a/EVOS_FAQs.pdf [hereinafter EVOS

Commission Report].

2. e Exxon Valdez spill is generally reported as releasing approximately 250,000

barrels, or 11,000,000 gallons, of crude oil. e April 2010, Deepwater Hori-

zon blowout spill now appears to have released roughly ve million barrels, at

a rate varying between 50-60,000 barrels per day from April 20 until a top cap

was applied on July 15, 2010.

3. See Gerald F. Seib, In Crisis, Opportunity for Obama, W S. J.,

Nov. 21, 2008, available at http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_

e Barack Obama Administration’s Gulf of Mex ico BP

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Oshore Drilling Com-

mission, like the Alaska Commission to set up after the

Exxon Valdez spill, will try to harvest conclusions about cau-

sation—“why did this calamity happen?”—and about neces-

sary funda mental changes in how we manage the extraction

and transport of oil for the future. Poised against this cor-

rective agenda is t he natu ral tendency of the industry and

the communities that depend economically upon it to avert

systemic changes that potentially will constrain ongoing eco-

nomic activities. As in Alaska, within days of the Gulf of

Mexico blowout, the industry and its supporters commenced

defensive political and media initiatives to dilute public per-

ceptions and impacts of the event.4 Meanwhile, legions of

attorneys have been crowding into court s and agencies sta k-

ing claims for billions of dollars in compensation and repara-

tions, just as lawyers jammed ights into Alask a in 1989.

In both their similarities and dierences, the Deepwa-

ter Horizon blowout spill a nd the Exxon Valdez experience

are instructive. Many of the simila rities are frustrating to

longtime observers. Some of t he dierences are immensely

heartening —in some but not all of the Obama Administra-

tion’s words and actions, in potential corrective congressio-

nal legislation, and in belated proposa ls for wide adoption

of a 1990 Alask a Commission recommendation for citizen

watchdog councils.

PUB:SB122721278056345271.html. Given the onrolling current event un-

derlying this present analysis, many citations herein are given to press accounts,

meanwhile noting that, over time, the factual record will be substantially deep-

ened by historical vetting. See, e.g., P L, I D W (2010).

4. Given the current political landscape, it may well also suit the Administration’s

best interests in public polling to move public attention on to other issues. See

Michael J. Evans, Oil Spill Pictures and the Media Blackout, BP O N, June

9, 2010, http://bpoilnews.com/oil-spill-pictures/oil-spill-pictures-bp-coverup-

rst-amendment/ (last visited Sept. 22, 2010). (“British Petroleum has thrown

a media blackout over the Gulf Coast, with the apparent complicity of some in

our federal and local governments.”)

Learning From Disasters: Twenty-

One Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil

Spill, Will Reactions to the Deepwater

Horizon Blowout Finally Address the

Systemic Flaws Revealed in Alaska?

by Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater is Professor of Law, Boston College Law School.

Author’s Note: e author chaired the State of Alaska Oil Commission’s legal

task force after the 1989 wreck of the M.S. Exxon Valdez. e Commission’s

extensive reports and Appendices, issued in February 1990, are available

online on the Alaska Resource Library and Information Service’s website,

www.arlis.org/vol2/a/EVOS_FAQs.pdf. e last-minute preparation of this

analysis beneted from the help, gratefully acknowledged, of two research

assistants, Brendan Boyle and Joseph Horton, both of the Boston College

Law School Class of 2012. e views expressed here, other than those cited

to the Commission and other sources, are the author’s own and not those of

the Commission nor of my research assistants.

Copyright © 2010 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.