‘89 Had Relatively Few Spills, but More Oil Was Involved

The catastrophic Exxon Valdez tanker accident loomed over a year punctuated by oil spills, but a 12-year study shows that 1989 had comparatively few spills, although a record amount of oil was involved.

Five accidents involving oil spills of more than 10,000 gallons occurred last year, substantially fewer than the 16 accidents logged in 1979 and slightly below the average of six to seven a year, according to the study released Friday by Golob’s Oil Pollution Bulletin.

“This past year, the public has had the perception that the nation is under siege by oil spills, but in fact there have been many more spills than (there were) in 1989,” said Richard Golob, who founded the Cambridge-based newsletter.

The report, which covered 78 tanker spills in the period 1978-89, concluded that “although massive spills can cause extensive environmental and economic damage, they remain a low-probability event.”

Taken quantitatively, 1989 was safer than many years. Qualitatively, the story was different.

When the Exxon Valdez ripped its hull open on a reef on March 24, Alaska’s wildlife-rich Prince William Sound was polluted with nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil, the biggest spill in U.S. history.

Just three months later, accidents in Rhode Island and Delaware within a day of each other spilled a total 720,000 gallons. Two other spills, in Hawaii and Port Valdez, Alaska, accounted for an additional 104,000 gallons spilled last year.

The total spillage in 1989 was an all-time high of 11.7 million gallons, compared to the 1983 low of 93,000 gallons, Golob said.