Exxon Disputes ?Science? Journal Claims that EXXON VALDEZ Pollution Still Affects PWS

Published Jan 14, 2004 12:01 AM by The Maritime Executive

In late 2003, the journal ?Science? claimed that 14 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill that the lethal affects of hydrocarbons still persist in Prince William Sound.

Disagreements exist between Exxon and government-funded scientists, and unknowns still persist. These uncertainties do little to diminish the general conclusions: oil persisted beyond a decade in surprising amounts, and had long-term impacts at the population level. Three major pathways of induction of long-term impacts emerge: (i) chronic persistence of oil, biological exposures, and population impacts to species closely associated with shallow sediments; (ii) delayed population impacts of health, growth, and reproduction; and (iii) indirect effects of trophic and interaction cascades, all of which transmit impacts well beyond the acute-phase mortality.

Mr. Frank Sprow, ExxonMobil?s Vice President for Safety, Health, and the Environment said, ?Hundreds of peer-related studies conducted by researchers from major independent laboratories and academic institutions resoundingly demonstrate the recovery of the Prince William Sound ecosystem and strongly contradict the news release that wildlife and aquatic plants continue to suffer as a result of the 1989 Valdez oil spill.?

Sprow added that shoreline excavation efforts by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council indicated that perhaps a total of 26 acres of buried oil remain in isolated pockets and wave shadows of large boulders. Since PWS consist of 5,000 kilometers of shorelines, this means that about two-tenths of one percent of the shoreline contains remnant and sequestered oil.

"Science" stated that the release of 42 million liters of ANS crude contaminated, to some degree, at least 1990 kilometers. PWS was most severely affected, but the oil spread more than 750 kilometers to the southwest along the Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak archipelago, and the Alaska Peninsula.

Sprow noted that it is unusual for a scientific journal to adopt one point of view without recognizing the weight of scientific data which contradict that viewpoint. ?Summary publications tend to lend themselves to speculative conjecture, while scientific papers must support their conclusions with appropriate technical data. We continue to believe that scientific forums are the proper venue for rationally resolving significant scientific issues.?

The oil spill Trustee Council says that there are only six species that have recovered fully from the impact of the spill: eagles, river otters, black oystercatchers, common murres, pink salmon, and sockeye salmon.

ExxonMobil disagrees with these conclusions about species recovery because it believes they create an erroneous impression of the true conditions in PWS today. ?We believe that this is misleading because it?s not practical or accurate to measure the recovery of a few species the Trustees are investigating. The Prince William Sound ecosystem is populated by thousands of other species that were not impacted by the spill, or were impacted but recovered quickly. These facts cannot be ignored,? ExxonMobil said in a released statement.