Coast Guard

Adequacy of Preparation and Response to Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Gao ID: RCED-90-44 October 30, 1989

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO: (1) evaluated the oil industry's and the federal government's preparedness for responding to a March 1989 spill of over 10 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound, Alaska; and (2) examined industry and government measures that could prevent future spills.

GAO found that: (1) the firm operating the vessel targeted its oil spill response plan for spills that accounted for less than 1 percent of the amount spilled in March 1989; (2) equipment breakdowns and weather and water conditions hampered recovery efforts; (3) current recovery and response technology was not adequate for addressing such large spills as the March 1989 incident and had not significantly changed over the last 2 decades due to substantial cuts in federal funding for research and development; (4) although Alaska required the firm operating the vessel to have a spill response plan, other states did not require such plans; (5) the Coast Guard believed that it had authority to monitor spill response and assume partial or total control over response, but lacked authority to ensure the adequacy of response plans before accidents occurred; (6) the federal and state governments widely varied in their use of such oil spill prevention methods as monitoring and directing ship movement, using harbor pilot or tug escort assistance, licensing, and industry training procedures; (7) over the past 20 years, there has been an average of 80 accidents a year involving about 900 tankers transporting other types of hazardous cargo; (8) funding sources for increased prevention efforts included direct industry funding, user fees, and direct appropriations; and (9) there was no single entity or leader responsible for developing, monitoring, or enforcing oil spill prevention and response methods.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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