"tanker Spills And Environmental Damage: Legal Advocacy By Maritime Law Attorneys"

 "tanker Spills And Environmental Damage: Legal Advocacy By Maritime Law Attorneys" - , an oil tanker owned by the Exxon Shipping Company, spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. It was the worst oil spill in the United States United States until the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. The Exxon Valdez oil slick covered 1,300 miles of coastline and killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters, seals and whales. Almost 30 years later, pockets of crude oil remain in some places. After the spill, Exxon Valdez returned to service under a different name, operating for more than two decades as an oil tanker and mineral carrier.

Left the port of Valdez, Alaska, bound for Long Beach, California, with 53 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude oil on board.

"tanker Spills And Environmental Damage: Legal Advocacy By Maritime Law Attorneys"

At four minutes after midnight on March 24, the ship struck Bligh Reef, a well-known navigation hazard in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

Philippines Beefs Up Efforts To Contain Oil Leak From Sunken Tanker

The impact of the collision split open the ship's hull, causing some 11 million gallons of crude oil to spill into the water.

At the time, it was the largest single oil spill in US waters. The first attempts to contain the oil failed, and in the following months, the oil slick spread, eventually covering about 1,300 miles of coastline.

, was drinking at the time and had left a third mate without a license to steer the huge ship.

In March 1990, Hazelwood was acquitted of felony charges. He was found guilty of one count of gross negligence, fined $50,000, and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service.

Oil Leak From Sunken Philippine Tanker Prompts Swimming Bans

In the months following the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Exxon employees, federal responders and more than 11,000 Alaska residents worked to clean up the oil spill.

Exxon paid about $2 billion in cleanup costs and $1.8 billion for habitat restoration and personal damages related to the spill.

Cleanup workers skimmed the oil from the surface of the water, sprayed chemicals that disperse the oil in the water and on the shore, washed beaches from the oil with hot water and rescued and cleaned animals caught in the oil.

Environmental officials deliberately left some areas of the shore untreated so that they could study the effect of cleaning measures, some of which were unproven at the time. They later found that aggressive washing with high-pressure hot water hoses was effective in removing the oil, but did even more ecological damage by killing the remaining plants and animals in the process.

Oil Spill “high Vulnerability Zone” Threatens The Global Energy Supply

One of those areas that was oily but never cleaned up is a large boulder on the shore called Mearn's Rock. Scientists have returned to Mearn's Rock every summer since the spill to take pictures of the plants and small critters growing on it. They found that most of the mussels, barnacles and various algae that were growing on the rocks before the spill returned to normal levels about three to four years after the spill.

Prince William Sound was pristine wilderness before the spill. The Exxon Valdez disaster changed all of this dramatically, taking a huge toll on wildlife. He killed approximately 250,000 seabirds, 3,000 otters, 300 seals, 250 bald eagles and 22 killer whales.

The oil spill may also have played a role in the collapse of salmon and herring fisheries in Prince William Sound in the early 1990s. The fishermen failed, and the economies of small towns on the shore, including Valdez and Cordova, suffered in the following years.

Some reports have estimated that the total economic loss from the Exxon Valdez oil spill was as much as $2.8 billion.

Tanker Involved In Mauritius Oil Spill Breaks In Two, Leaving

A 2001 study found oil contamination remained at more than half of the 91 beach sites tested in Prince William Sound.

The spill had killed about 40 percent of all sea otters living in the Sound. The sea otter population did not recover to pre-spill levels until 2014, twenty-five years after the spill.

Herring stocks, once a source of lucrative income for Prince William Sound fishermen, have never fully recovered.

In the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the United States Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which President George H.W. Bush signed it into law that year.

Maritime Environment And Oil Spillage: Legality And Regimes

The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 increased penalties for companies responsible for oil spills and required all oil tankers in US waters to have double hulls.

It was a single-hull tanker; double-hull design, by making it less likely that a collision would spill oil, could have prevented the Exxon Valdez disaster.

—first commissioned in 1986— was repaired and returned to service a year after the spill in a different ocean and under a different name.

The single-hull ship could no longer transport oil in US waters, due to the new regulations. The ship began to run oil transport routes in Europe, where single-hull oil tankers were still allowed. There the new name was given

Photos: Tanker Oil Spill Catastrophe In Mauritius

Exxon sold the infamous tanker in 2008 to a Hong Kong-based shipping company. The company converted the old oil tanker to an ore carrier, and renamed it

. In 2010, the star-crossed vessel collided with another bulk carrier in the Yellow Sea and was again seriously injured. on Sunday, according to a report from

Rescuers have recovered the bodies of three Sanchi crew members but 29 are still missing. The collision of the Iranian-owned tanker with the Chinese carrier CF Crystal occurred 160 nautical miles east of Shanghai.

It is too early to know how the oil spill will affect wildlife and the marine environment but long-term monitoring will be needed to understand this. Oil spill damage is difficult to measure because there are many factors involved: the type of oil leaked, the direction of ocean currents, weather conditions and the environment where it occurred leaks are all important.

Understanding The Liability For Oil Spillage Under International Regime Vis A Vis Mauritius Case 2020

The Sanchi was transporting 136,000 tons of condensate from Iran to South Korea when the collision occurred. There is no firm data yet on the volume of oil spilled, but the oil slick is reported to be 10 nautical miles long and 1-4 nautical miles wide. Two Chinese vessels are reported to be cleaning the slick with foam detergents, while the East China Sea office of the State Oceanic Administration is using radar to measure the range and its impact.

Oil spills are usually associated with crude oil - a black or dark brown sticky liquid - but condensates are quite different. They exist in gaseous form in high-pressure oil reservoirs but condense into liquids when extracted. Condensates are easily refined into high-value petroleum products such as kerosene, diesel, aviation fuel and heating fuel, and are called "the champagne of crude oil".

Condensates are less toxic than crude oil and slightly soluble in water. They also evaporate more easily and are more flammable, which explains why the Sanchi burned for several days after the crash.

Because the collision occurred more than 100 nautical miles offshore, the impact on the marine environment and nearby fisheries can be minimized although ocean currents that drive fine -south may carry pollution to the Zhoushan fishery off the east coast of China.

Public Health Impacts Of An Imminent Red Sea Oil Spill

An official with the East China Sea office of the State Oceanic Administration, which is responsible for monitoring the marine environment and responding to emergencies, said in an interview with

On January 11 that the latest monitoring data obtained by the coast guard showed "no oil bloom, low oil concentrations, and water quality within Category standards I” between 1.3 and 19 nautical miles from Sanchi.

The administration also told the media last week that weather conditions and the location of the Sanchi meant, "the incident will not currently have any impact on the coastal environment." Modeling by the Yantai Oil Spill Response Center suggests that only 1% of condensate remains in the water five hours after a spill.

Distance from shore can make a big difference to the environmental damage from oil spills. For example, when the oil tanker Atlantic Empress sank after a collision in 1979 it spilled 280,000 tonnes of oil - the largest release ever made by a tanker. However, the oil did not reach the coast, which reduced the damage. In contrast, the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 was smaller but destroyed 1,300 miles of coastline in Prince William Sound, killing much of the local wildlife.

Oil Spill Disasters

There will always be a risk of marine oil spills although it is possible to use legal, regulatory and technical measures to reduce their likelihood, ensure that responsible parties are held accountable, and deal with the consequences.

A year after the Exxon Valdez spill, the United States passed a law that requires new tankers operating in US waters to be double-hulled so that if there is a grounding or collision there is less chance of a leak. In 1992 the International Maritime Organization followed suit, demanding that all new tankers be double hulled and that existing tankers be brought up to the same standard. The MARPOL convention is the most important international agreement designed to prevent marine pollution from shipping. China is a member of the IMO and a signatory of MARPOL.

The double hull standards and other changes helped to reduce the spread, which dropped significantly from the 1990s onwards.

A number of details about the Sanchi, such as its age and whether it has passed security

A Plan To Avert A Vast Oil Spill Off Yemen Moves Ahead

Maritime and admiralty law, attorneys and law firms, legal attorneys law, autism advocacy and law center, law and advocacy, lawyer legal law attorneys, maritime law attorneys, elder law and advocacy, maritime law and order, environmental law attorneys, legal advocacy and resource center, environmental damage by humans