Lessons from Exxon Valdez spill have gone unheeded

Source: WaPo

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A commission that investigated the Alaska spill found that oil companies cut corners to maximize profits. Systems intended to prevent disaster failed, and no backups were in place. Regulators were too close to the oil industry and approved woefully inadequate accident response and cleanup plans.

History is repeating, say officials who investigated the Valdez, because the lessons of two decades ago remain unheeded.

"It's disappointing," said 84-year-old Walt Parker, chairman of the Alaska Oil Spill Commission, which made dozens of recommendations for preventing a recurrence. "It's almost as though we had never written the report."

Marine experts predict that the many panels investigating the Deepwater Horizon blowout -- including a presidential commission that began work this week in New Orleans -- will produce reports with numerous findings that could have been cut and pasted from the 20-year-old report written by Parker's commission or another body that examined the Valdez accident. They also fear those findings may have no more impact than the Valdez conclusions have.

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Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/13/AR2010071306291.html?hpid=topnews

By the time the full damage of this spill is known and the many investigations are complete most Americans will have totally forgot about it like they have the Financial Disaster of 2008-09. Unlike the Financial Disaster the Republicans will control Congress when it comes time to strengthen regulations on oil & gas companies and we all know what that means! For those who think Financial Reform did not go far enough just wait and see what happens.

Next oil & gas related disaster will be "Fracking" for Natural Gas...Folks will act shocked and say how can this happen but it too will pass with nothing being done.

We can't seem to learn the lesson of FDR when he tried to balance the budget and dragged the country back into a depression. We can't learn from the Valdez spill. We just can't learn...

Piper Alpha, Ocean Ranger and Petrobras 36

How to delay and get away from paying.

Oh believe me, BP's lawyers have been using the Valdez spill as a model.

Exxon learned that the cost of the disaster can be largely shifted to others: the victims, the government, etc., and BP is following the same game plan.

You can never show or quantify the true extend to the damage done in such a disaster, and the courts seem all too willing to nullify "punitive" damages. As a result, the oil companies skate.