Tanker Duty: Easy Does It : Exxon Disaster Puts Spotlight on Oil Shipping

It was a quiet night off the coast of California. The lights of Los Angeles glowed dimly on the horizon and the seas appeared empty, yet Third Mate Marie C. Wuerker was alert to potential trouble.

Radar showed a cluster of boats less than half an hour away. The boats gave no sign of knowing that they were possibly on a collision course with the Arco Alaska. It was a Friday night; one of the radar dots might represent a drunken weekend sailor.

Almost 1,000 feet long, the Arco Alaska was loaded with 52.4 million gallons of crude oil and would require two miles to stop. All on board were painfully aware of the March 24 grounding of the Exxon Valdez, which caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history. This was not a time to take chances.

Captain Returns

Wuerker took the ship off automatic pilot and ordered the helmsman to change course. Capt. Tom Morse, who had stepped out for a moment, returned to the bridge.

“Cap, I’m glad you’re back,” Wuerker said. “Would you keep an eye on the fishing boat? He’s the only one of concern.”

Morse peered at a radarscope. Minutes passed without a word. Then chimes rang out at 10 p.m. and the captain, a casually dressed man with hair cropped neatly near the shoulder, finally spoke.

“He shouldn’t be a problem now unless he does something stupid,” Morse said.

This was two Friday nights ago. The Arco Alaska was nearing the end of a 2,025-mile voyage from Valdez, and one of its most difficult passages still lay ahead.

Difficult Waters

The oil tankers that last year brought 6.1 billion gallons of crude to Southern California, shipping experts say, face increasingly difficult waters near the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors--the nation’s busiest port complex.

Bigger and bigger tankers must compete for space with fleets of other cargo vessels--some of them just as large--and maneuver safely through the sometimes unpredictable movements of those who course the waters in boats, windsurfers and jet skis for pleasure.

“You get all the weekend wonder people out there,” the senior captain of the ship would say.

In sharply angled channels, the safety margin for the big ships is measured in feet and inches. The largest tankers are so huge that they do not dock, using the harbor only as an anchorage. And the next largest class--which includes the Arco Alaska--draws so much water that the ships cannot be fully loaded. Even partly loaded, they might scrape bottom if they didn’t wait for high tide.

At 10:52, Point Fermin on the Palos Verdes Peninsula was directly north. Two dozen small boats lay ahead on the radarscope. It was time for the captain, with 19 years at sea, to take control from Wuerker, a two-year veteran and the mate on watch.

Morse ordered the engines, which had been turning at 90 revolutions a minute, backed down to 60. He went back and forth from the dimly lit helm to the chart room to make sure the ship would pass clear of a sunken wreck just outside the harbor breakwater. He called out a sequence of course changes, shifting by degrees northward, slowing the ship further. His target was the Queen’s Gate entrance on the Long Beach side of the breakwater.

The fishing boats fell behind the tanker.

Outside Help

At 11:20 p.m., a swift boat came through the harbor entrance and bore down on the Arco Alaska. Minutes later, Lyle Trottier of Jacobsen Pilot Service Inc., who had been summoned from shore an hour earlier to guide the ship into port, clambered up a rope ladder onto the deck.

A tug, the Pacific Escort, took up position on the right bow. On shore, in Jacobsen’s radar room, President Dick Jacobsen, a pilot himself, manned the scope and radioed the ship’s position to Trottier minute by minute.

Although the ship’s size is not so apparent at sea, the closer the Arco Alaska got to the entrance, the larger it seemed. From the bridge, 109 feet above the water, the ship dwarfed the breakwater. The entrance looked tight. To make matters worse, a dredge filling in what will eventually become more terminal facilities appeared to block the channel.

“Because of the dredge, we have to make a shallower turn than I like,” Trottier said.

The 952-foot Arco Alaska began to angle through, with 300 to 400 feet of clearance on the left and perhaps 500 feet in front.

Down to Business

Casual conversation stopped. A five-second searchlight on the north end of the entrance swept the deck again and again with a reddish glare. Trottier threw out command after command with clipped precision.

“Left 20,” he said. Then: “Hard left. Thirty degrees left. Forty turns a minute. Midship! Hard right. 20 turns. Midship!”

Finally, the big ship was through, heading for a deep-water anchorage far from the docks, just inside the breakwater. At 12:26 a.m., with an enormous clanking roar, the 12-ton anchor dropped to the bottom. The Arco Alaska was at Anchorage C-14.

And that is where the ship stayed until Sunday night two weeks later, when the second part of its navigation through the harbor would begin.

These are not average times for tanker crews, and they know it.

An all-hands letter from Jerry A. Aspland, president of Arco Marine International, was tacked to the mess bulletin board of the Arco Alaska. Aspland labels the Exxon spill “a disaster not only for Exxon but also for the entire oil industry,” adding ominously: “While it didn’t happen to us, it could have.”

Asking crew members not to “damage (their) personal reputation, that of the company or of seafarers in general,” he urged them in the April 6 letter to avoid complacency on duty and to “be moderate” when ashore. In public, he said, Arco employees should “avoid criticism of Exxon” and “rally to the support of the industry.”

During the last supper before the ship’s arrival in port, the conversation had turned to the Exxon Valdez accident and the sudden attention on tanker operations.

“We’re being watched,” Morse acknowledged.

Even before the Exxon Valdez incident, the Coast Guard had begun phasing in a new alcohol and drug-testing program. The Coast Guard lowered the legal blood alcohol level from .10% to .04% and will soon require pre-employment tests, random examinations and testing after accidents.

Arco--with an eye on the example of fired Exxon Valdez Capt. Joseph Hazelwood, whose blood alcohol level after the accident was more than the legal limit--announced May 1 that it will subject all crew members to breath tests as they come on board and institute a program of random alcohol and drug-testing.

While no major tanker spill has occurred in waters near Los Angeles, the Coast Guard’s Los Angeles Marine Safety Office has investigated 127 accidents, including collisions, fires, groundings and equipment failures, which injured five and caused $6.5 million in damages from 1981 to 1988.

1976 Accident

The most spectacular accident was the Dec. 17, 1976, explosion in San Pedro that destroyed the Liberian oil tanker Sansinema, killed nine men, blew out windows on shore and caused $21.6 million damage. The blast, caused by flammable vapors escaping from tanks, led to the requirement of inert gas systems to reduce the risk of explosion.

In a more recent accident, the Navy oiler Roanoke collided with the Liberian tanker Mint Prosperity in fog just outside the breakwater on July 2, 1986. The Coast Guard ruled that the Navy ship had violated rules. “This is another case of a human getting into the loop and screwing things up,” said Gary Gregory, Coast Guard head of port operations.

On that Sunday night, refinery tanks at the Arco refinery in Carson were empty. The Arco Alaska prepared to move from Anchorage C-14 near the breakwater through the Long Beach Channel at Pier 121 in Long Beach. There, its high-speed pumps would force its cargo--at 60,000 barrels an hour--through a 42-inch pipeline that goes under city streets to tanks near the refinery.

Capt. Jim Gray, 39, a resident of Peabody, Mass., was there replacing Morse, who had left for a two-month vacation. The pilot was Sam Jabuka, 58, who wore a jacket and tie as he came on board. Three tugs took position--two on the bow, one on the stern.

The anchor was aweigh at 9:35 p.m.

Pier 121 was only 1 1/2 miles away, but it would take the giant ship--moving first at the speed of a fast walk, then a stroll and finally no more than a baby’s crawl--until 11:08 p.m. to tie up with its first line.

At 11 p.m., only 100 feet separated the ship from the dock. Eight crew members readied winches and hawsers. On the dock, Arco Terminal employees prepared to catch heaving lines. With barely visible progress, the gap narrowed to 75 feet 77 seconds later; to 50 feet in 86 seconds. At eight feet, Gray ordered pump man Glenn Woodford to call out every foot. It took five minutes and 16 seconds to close the gap to one foot.

Yabuka, who was directing the tugs at this point, explained that the slowness is essential in maneuvering 188,000 tons of vessel and cargo. “You could tear all that out in a second,” he said, gesturing at the solid-appearing concrete dock.

Finally, the ship was in position and the pumping began. Yabuka headed back to the pilot station where another assignment was waiting. It had been a good night so far.

“Slid that baby in real easy,” he said.