Alaska S Prince William Sound

The sky was still black over the Gulf of Mexico as fisherman Jeff Howard steered his battered flat-bottom boat from one crab trap to another, frantic to snap up a few more crustaceans before the oil came. He had little time to waste. Stiff winds, rough waters and almost empty traps wouldn't keep him docked. Anything, he figured, was better than nothing. "Today might be the last day you can go," said Howard, 43. "You might not be able to go for another year. Who knows?" As the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continued to spread Friday, Louisiana's $2.5-billion commercial fishing industry, which provides much of the country's domestic shrimp and oysters, is bracing for a virtual shutdown that could trigger shortages and price hikes for consumers nationwide.

A massive oil slick began lapping against the ragged coastline of southeastern Louisiana on Friday, threatening devastation to some of the nation's most fragile wetlands and prompting President Obama to order a moratorium on new drilling projects while the federal government considers new guidelines to prevent future spills. With sharp southeasterly winds driving the crude oil toward shore, federal, state and private crews struggled to contain the slick, which is gushing from a broken well head nearly a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans.

July 19, 1979: Collision of two ships off Trinidad and Tobago, Atlantic Empress and Aegean Captain; 300,000 tons. Aug. 6, 1983: Fire aboard Castillo de Bellver, off South Africa coast; 250,000 tons. March 16, 1978: Tanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground off coast of France; 223,000 tons. March 18, 1967: Torrey Canyon grounded off coast of England; 119,000 tons. Dec. 19, 1972: Sea Star involved in collision in Gulf of Oman; 115,000 tons. May 12, 1976: Urquiola runs aground off Spain; 100,000 tons. Feb.

The sky was still black over the Gulf of Mexico as fisherman Jeff Howard steered his battered flat-bottom boat from one crab trap to another, frantic to snap up a few more crustaceans before the oil came. He had little time to waste. Stiff winds, rough waters and almost empty traps wouldn't keep him docked. Anything, he figured, was better than nothing. "Today might be the last day you can go," said Howard, 43. "You might not be able to go for another year. Who knows?" As the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continued to spread Friday, Louisiana's $2.5-billion commercial fishing industry, which provides much of the country's domestic shrimp and oysters, is bracing for a virtual shutdown that could trigger shortages and price hikes for consumers nationwide.

The Exxon Valdez should be allowed to return to Alaska's Prince William Sound, where it spilled 11 million gallons of oil in 1989, the tanker's owner told an appeals court Wednesday. The Exxon Valdez, which now sails between the Middle East and Asia, has been barred from the sound since 1990, when Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act. The act prohibits any tanker that has spilled more than 1 million gallons since March 22, 1989, from entering Prince William Sound. Lawyer E.

Now that the national inquiry into the decade's unusually high incidence of real and alleged moral turpitude on the part of high-profile government and business figures has claimed two more victims (Wright and Coelho), we would do well to examine a theme touched on by Jack Beatty ("People's Party Sold to High Rollers," Op-Ed Page, June 2)--namely that our present ethical framework is too narrow, and should be expanded to include those of our collective behaviors and attitudes that are profoundly harmful, but are not, as yet, considered "unethical."

To the bureaucrats in the Interior Department's environmental protection division, the fur-bearing seal of northern Canada and Alaska is a commodity with a price tag of precisely $15. Part of a computer model aimed at calculating the economic costs of environmental damage from toxic spills, the figure is supposed to reflect the market value of a seal pelt. Geese, on the other hand, have been assigned values of up to $35.74 each, a price derived from analyzing their popularity among hunters.

The crude oil clotting the shores of Alaska's Prince William Sound mocks Washington's oft-made promise that oil development on federal lands and in federal waters will be conducted only in an "environmentally sound" manner. As late as Monday, Secretary of the Interior Manuel J. Lujan was vowing that the Bush Administration would forge ahead with exploration and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Alaska's North Slope in an "environmentally sound" manner.

A Long Beach-bound Exxon oil tanker ran aground on a reef Friday and spilled an estimated 8.4 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, a pristine Pacific waterway heavily used by kayakers, fishermen and tourists. It was the largest Alaskan oil spill ever. The Exxon Valdez, a 987-foot tanker owned by Exxon Shipping Co., rammed the reef about 25 miles from the city of Valdez, the northernmost ice-free port in the United States, at 12:30 a.m. Coast Guard officers speculated that the ship's captain may have been trying to avoid icebergs from the nearby Columbia Glacier when the accident occurred.

Exxon is the nation's third largest industrial corporation, earning $5.3 billion in profit on sales of nearly $80 billion last year. Despite these resources, however, this immense corporate empire has failed to come to grips with its oil spill more than five weeks after the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Exxon's first cleanup plan was found to be inadequate by federal officials. Its second plan seems to retreat even from the commitment of the first plan, proposing 3,400 workers compared with 4,000, and calculating 364 miles of contaminated beach when Alaska officials count double that amount.

The Exxon Valdez should be allowed to return to Alaska's Prince William Sound, where it spilled 11 million gallons of oil in 1989, the tanker's owner told an appeals court Wednesday. The Exxon Valdez, which now sails between the Middle East and Asia, has been barred from the sound since 1990, when Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act. The act prohibits any tanker that has spilled more than 1 million gallons since March 22, 1989, from entering Prince William Sound. Lawyer E.

July 19, 1979: Collision of two ships off Trinidad and Tobago, Atlantic Empress and Aegean Captain; 300,000 tons. Aug. 6, 1983: Fire aboard Castillo de Bellver, off South Africa coast; 250,000 tons. March 16, 1978: Tanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground off coast of France; 223,000 tons. March 18, 1967: Torrey Canyon grounded off coast of England; 119,000 tons. Dec. 19, 1972: Sea Star involved in collision in Gulf of Oman; 115,000 tons. May 12, 1976: Urquiola runs aground off Spain; 100,000 tons. Feb.

Angry that President Bush has yet to visit the oil-stained beaches of Alaska's Prince William Sound, the National Wildlife Federation sent pieces of the fouled shoreline to the White House today. The environmental group delivered to Bush and leaders of his Administration zip-lock plastic bags containing blackened, slime-covered stones from a beach twice treated by Exxon after its disastrous oil spill six months ago. Each bag was labeled, "A Prince William Sound rock called 'clean' by Exxon."

To the bureaucrats in the Interior Department's environmental protection division, the fur-bearing seal of northern Canada and Alaska is a commodity with a price tag of precisely $15. Part of a computer model aimed at calculating the economic costs of environmental damage from toxic spills, the figure is supposed to reflect the market value of a seal pelt. Geese, on the other hand, have been assigned values of up to $35.74 each, a price derived from analyzing their popularity among hunters.

Declaring that the petroleum industry has "neither the equipment nor the personnel" to handle a catastrophic tanker spill, 14 major oil companies pledged $250 million Tuesday to create five regional oil spill centers capable of quickly responding to a Valdez-type disaster anywhere in U.S. coastal waters. The regional response centers, one of which may be located in Long Beach and another in Seattle, are among dozens of recommendations made public in Washington Tuesday by a high-level industry task force organized by the American Petroleum Institute after the disastrous 11-million-gallon spill from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24. The task force, made up of chief executive officers of eight major oil companies, also called for stepped-up research and development of improved oil spill cleanup equipment and chemical dispersants, and they made a series of recommendations to increase tanker safety.

Now that the national inquiry into the decade's unusually high incidence of real and alleged moral turpitude on the part of high-profile government and business figures has claimed two more victims (Wright and Coelho), we would do well to examine a theme touched on by Jack Beatty ("People's Party Sold to High Rollers," Op-Ed Page, June 2)--namely that our present ethical framework is too narrow, and should be expanded to include those of our collective behaviors and attitudes that are profoundly harmful, but are not, as yet, considered "unethical."

Investigations into the tanker Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24 will continue for months, but the angry comment of one fishing boat captain on April 12 helps to explain a major part of the problem: "We are out here working our hearts out without accomplishing anything because there's no one in charge and that's the real problem." That was nearly three weeks after the grounding of the Exxon Valdez on Bligh Reef. On the next day, Admiral Paul A. Yost, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, arrived in Valdez to take charge of the federal government's role in the cleanup of the 240,000-barrel oil spill.

Declaring that the petroleum industry has "neither the equipment nor the personnel" to handle a catastrophic tanker spill, 14 major oil companies pledged $250 million Tuesday to create five regional oil spill centers capable of quickly responding to a Valdez-type disaster anywhere in U.S. coastal waters. The regional response centers, one of which may be located in Long Beach and another in Seattle, are among dozens of recommendations made public in Washington Tuesday by a high-level industry task force organized by the American Petroleum Institute after the disastrous 11-million-gallon spill from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24. The task force, made up of chief executive officers of eight major oil companies, also called for stepped-up research and development of improved oil spill cleanup equipment and chemical dispersants, and they made a series of recommendations to increase tanker safety.

After an Exxon tanker spilled 240,000 barrels of oil into the Alaskan waterway that provides his living, Robin Dexter took only a couple of days to decide what needed to be done. The 41-year-old fisherman quickly bought 10 shares of Exxon Corp. stock, and Thursday he got the chance to vent his frustration with the management that now must answer to him. "Until I get a livelihood again, I'm being forced into the oil industry," he told company executives and 2,000 shareholders at Exxon's annual meeting.

Exxon Corp. Chairman Lawrence Rawl, faced at the oil giant's annual meeting today with angry shareholders and protesters calling Exxon a corporate criminal, rejected demands that he resign over his handling of the Alaskan oil spill. Rawl told stockholders that, in the wake of the tanker grounding that caused North America's worst oil spill, Exxon has ordered random drug and alcohol tests for employees in sensitive jobs, "including me." He also pledged the company will complete its cleanup of Alaska's Prince William Sound by September or earlier.