Exxon Valdez

The ship once known as the Exxon Valdez has been sold for scrap 23 years after causing the worst tanker spill in U.S. history, which led to new designs for oil carriers. Now called the Oriental Nicety, the vessel was sold for about $16 million to Global Marketing Systems Inc. in Maryland, the world's biggest cash buyer of ships for demolition. Converted into an ore carrier in 2007, it changed owners and names four times after the 1989 accident, American Bureau of Shipping records show.

ALANG, India - For the ship formerly known as the Exxon Valdez, even sailing quietly into the sunset is proving difficult. Now called the Oriental Nicety, it's floating off India in a kind of high-seas limbo as a court decides whether the vessel that dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's unspoiled Prince William Sound in 1989 can be hacked apart in this forlorn graveyard for once-mighty ships. Local environmentalists have petitioned the High Court here in the western state of Gujarat to block its entry pending an onboard inspection for toxic chemicals, including mercury, arsenic and asbestos.

ALANG, India - For the ship formerly known as the Exxon Valdez, even sailing quietly into the sunset is proving difficult. Now called the Oriental Nicety, it's floating off India in a kind of high-seas limbo as a court decides whether the vessel that dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's unspoiled Prince William Sound in 1989 can be hacked apart in this forlorn graveyard for once-mighty ships. Local environmentalists have petitioned the High Court here in the western state of Gujarat to block its entry pending an onboard inspection for toxic chemicals, including mercury, arsenic and asbestos.

The notorious Exxon Valdez, responsible for the biggest oil spill in U.S. history until the BP disaster two years ago, is being scrapped. The tanker, renamed the Oriental Nicety and converted into an ore carrier, was sold by Cosco for about $16 million to Maryland-based Global Marketing Systems Inc., Bloomberg News reports.  The 1989 Valdez spill dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's pristine Prince William Sound, damaging 700...

Work crews refloated the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez almost two hours ahead of schedule today, and the ship that caused North America's worst oil spill was hauled toward an oil-fouled island 25 miles away for temporary repairs. The Coast Guard said the 987-foot tanker was pulled off a reef and refloated at 10:35 a.m., two hours before high tide. Six tugboats took part in the operation.

A federal appeals court Friday cut in half a $5-billion jury award for punitive damages against Exxon Mobil Corp. in the 1989 Valdez oil spill. The case, one of the nation's longest-running noncriminal legal disputes, stems from a 1994 decision by an Anchorage jury to award the damages to 34,000 fishermen and other Alaskans. Their property and livelihoods were harmed when the oil tanker Valdez struck a charted reef, spilling 11 million gallons of oil. It was the third time the U.S.

Alaska's Court of Appeals on Friday reversed the conviction of Exxon Valdez captain Joseph Hazelwood in the nation's largest oil spill, in which 11 million gallons of crude flowed into Prince William Sound in 1989. A jury had convicted Hazelwood of negligent discharge of oil, a misdemeanor. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail and fined $1,000 for his role in the March 24, 1989, oil spill.

After weeks of idling in waters off the coast, the battered and reviled Exxon Valdez began its slow journey into San Diego Harbor, where it will undergo extensive repairs to its hull--and possibly a name change. The tanker ran aground on March 24 in Alaska's Prince William Sound, causing the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. The tanker was inspected off San Clemente Island by California officials, who gave the go-ahead for the tow operation to begin after no oily discharges were spotted.

After the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground in 1989, experts predicted it would take years to clean up the worst oil spill in U.S. history and restore the pristine waters of Alaska's Prince William Sound. It has turned out that cleaning up the massive litigation in its wake has taken even longer. To the surprise and dismay of some weary plaintiffs' lawyers, the Supreme Court announced Monday that it would reconsider whether Exxon Mobil Corp. can be forced to pay a record $2.

The Exxon Valdez, the tanker that caused the nation's worst oil spill, will be renamed Exxon Mediterranean and will sail in the Mediterranean or Middle East when it is returned to service in August. Exxon Shipping Co. President Gus Elmer said today that the decision to rename the vessel was consistent with its relocation to the foreign service. "Due to declining Alaskan crude oil, the vessel will enter foreign service, most likely loading crude in the Mediterranean or the Middle East.

President Obama has nominated an Alaska Supreme Court justice who earlier served on Planned Parenthood's board and battled Big Oil over the Exxon Valdez spill to a seat on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The White House announced late Wednesday that it was proposing Justice Morgan Christen for one of three open seats on the San Francisco-based appeals court. The proposed elevation of the 49-year-old Washington state native was made on the eve of a contentious vote called in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Obama's first nomination to the 9th Circuit, that of UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu, which has languished in the Senate for 15 months.

Richard N. Goldman, a San Francisco philanthropist and civic leader who co-founded the Goldman Environmental Prize to recognize grass-roots environmental activism around the world, has died. He was 90. Goldman, a passionate supporter of environmental causes, the Jewish community and Israel, died Monday at his San Francisco home, according to his family. The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, created in 1951 by Goldman and his wife, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, has given away more than $680 million since its inception.

After spending around half a billion dollars, scientists paid by the government to study the Exxon Valdez oil spill over the last two decades still cannot answer some of the most important questions about the damage it caused or about whether Prince William Sound will fully recover. We're in danger of ending up just as ignorant after the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, as once again, our legal, political and economic systems hobble scientists and pervert the search for answers.

The small boat approached four pelicans perched on a rusty platform emerging from the flat green waters of the Gulf of Mexico on this steaming hot and windless day. They peered down their long beaks at the vessel. Then, as if teasing the humans spying on them through binoculars, two of the birds spread their wings and soared away just as the boat drew near. But two remained behind, and they were the ones wildlife biologist Haven Barnhill eyed with concern. Earlier that morning, with the nation's worst-ever oil spill gushing uncontained for the sixth week, Barnhill had found a dead pelican in these waters, its feathers slick with oil, its life lost to a slow creep of poison.

As BP continued its effort to gain control of its untamed deep-sea well, President Obama announced more restrictions on offshore oil drilling Thursday and insisted his administration is firmly in charge of the response to the spill, now believed to be the largest in U.S. history. Batting away suggestions that the federal response has been lackluster and that BP executives have been calling some of the shots, Obama insisted that "BP is operating at our direction." "Every key decision and action they take must be approved by us in advance," Obama said.

BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward is promising to shoulder all cleanup costs and pay all legitimate claims from the deadly Gulf Coast oil rig accident — but for those hit hard by the spill the relief could come too late to help them recover. It took nearly 20 years for more than 30,000 Alaskan fishing boat operators, property owners and others to be paid damages after the Exxon Valdez tanker accident in 1989, legal experts note. A jury awarded victims $5 billion in punitive damages in 1994, but Exxon appealed.

The ship that caused the nation's worst oil spill sailed out of San Diego Bay today for a trial run after $30 million in repairs to its hull, which was ripped open on an Alaskan reef on March 24, 1989. The rebuilt Exxon Valdez--renamed the Exxon Mediterranean--is starting seven to 10 days of rigorous sea testing. Since last month the 987-foot tanker has undergone dock trials at a National Steel & Shipbuilding Co. pier.

Each news update from the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico tightens a hard knot in my stomach. Alaskans who lived through the Exxon Valdez oil spill feel dark memories resurfacing. We talk about our sadness for the people in the way, people who don't know what's about to hit them. "They still seem to think they'll be able to contain this and stop it, and they just can't," said Rick Steiner, a former University of Alaska fisheries extension agent whose life was irrevocably upset by the Exxon Valdez, which spilled at least 11 million gallons of oil in Prince William Sound 21 years ago. "Not much oil is going to be recovered; they're not going to save much wildlife; they're not going to be able to restore damaged ecosystems."