Don’t Shut Alaska’s Oil Spigot : Search Has to Go On, Despite a Chorus of ‘I-Told-You-Sos’

While it is too early to draw firm conclusions, it appears that the disastrous oil spill of the Exxon Valdez was caused by inexcusable human error. Alaskans and all Americans are and should be rightly outraged. Because the captain of the tanker was under the influence of alcohol, the command of one of the largest tankers in this country’s merchant fleet was left to a person without appropriate credentials.

Since the start-up of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline 11 years ago, everyone involved with moving the oil has worked hard to avoid this type of accident. Obviously, they did not work hard enough. The fact that 8,858 tankers have sailed from Valdez, carrying more than 282 billion gallons of oil without a major incident, does not justify or reduce the significance of this event. We intend to learn from this incident and do everything possible to prevent it from happening again.

As with all things, there are two ways to look at this accident. It is tragic. It dumped more than 240,000 barrels of crude oil into one of Alaska’s most biologically productive marine environments, an area of extraordinary value and beauty.

Yet we are fortunate that three-fourths of the 1.1 million barrels of crude oil stayed on board the grounded tanker. Exxon has now transferred more than 500,000 barrels of that crude, and once all of it is unloaded, the huge risk of additional pollution will be eliminated.

Exxon has accepted full responsibility for this spill and has committed to pay for the cleanup and make full reimbursement for damages. I intend to see that the company lives up to that commitment.

The citizens of Prince William Sound are legitimately concerned over the effect thisspill will have on their future. In an effort to better understand the impact, I have asked President Bush to dispatch to Prince William Sound a team of scientists who have studied large oil spills around the world. I also will ask the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to examine the adequacy of the response to this incident and the need for stricter and more realistic contingency planning.

Beyond contingency plans, one question has been asked countless times during the last few days: Will the Exxon Valdez oil spill have a detrimental effect on efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas leasing? While there is no logical connection, I recognize that we live in a world of perception and that therefore this question has to be addressed.

We are hearing a lot of “I-told-you-so” from the environmental community. There are those who say that this accident proves that we should not have built the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. These same people will try to mislead the public to believe that the Exxon Valdez accident is proof that exploration and development in a national wildlife refuge cannot be done safely.

Yet as President Bush reiterated last week, we know there is no real connection between the two issues. Despite the oil spill, we need to find other sources of oil in Alaska. Each day, the pipeline delivers nearly 2 million barrels of oil to Valdez--or 24% of total U.S. production.

As Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly has said, if we do not move oil from Valdez, we will have to bring it in from foreign sources. That means more foreign tankers hauling oil into San Francisco Bay, Cape Cod Bay, Chesapeake Bay and other U.S. ports. But this scenario could also become a reality if we do not explore for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Production from Prudhoe Bay is beginning to decline. By the year 2000, as little as 800,000 barrels a day could be moving through the pipeline. We won’t know if there is oil in the wildlife refuge unless it is opened for exploration. And we won’t have the option to find oil in the wildlife refuge unless we go ahead with authorizing legislation.

There really is no room for compromise. Valdez will continue long into the future to be our nation’s most important oil port. Therefore, it must be our nation’s safest, most environmentally sound oil port. Both the ecological and oil resources are extremely valuable and require our greatest concern and closest attention.

The Energy and Natural Resources Committee recently sent to the Senate a bill authorizing oil and gas leasing on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In constructing this legislation, the committee built on past experiences with oil development in the Arctic to fashion an environmentally sound development program for the refuge.

The bill requires that the best available technologies be used and that facilities be consolidated to minimize the areas affected; that all oil exploration and development activities be conducted in a manner that results in no significant adverse effect on the Arctic environment; establishes a reclamation fund and requires performance bonding to ensure that all areas are reclaimed, and creates a dedicated fund for environmental monitoring and enforcement by federal and state agencies to ensure continuous compliance with environmental laws.

As Congress continues to consider the legislation, I will demand that we look closely at the Exxon Valdez oil spill and learn from any mistakes that have been made. If legislative changes are necessary to improve contingency planning and our emergency response capabilities,then they should be pursued--and the wildlife refuge legislation is the ideal vehicle for advancing such measures.