New Settlement of Exxon-Spill Suits Reported : Litigation: Alaska Gov. Walter J. Hickel has scheduled a press conference today to reveal the terms of the agreement among the oil company, the federal and state governments and private plaintiff groups.

Gov. Walter Hickel has scheduled a news conference today in which sources expect him to outline a settlement in the criminal case against Exxon Corp. for the giant 1989 Alaskan oil spill.

Details of the purported agreement were not available Sunday. Hickel spokesman Eric Rehmann would only confirm that the governor would make a statement at his Anchorage office regarding the Exxon lawsuit.

An earlier settlement, announced in March, fell apart when a federal judge rejected the criminal plea-bargain part of the agreement the following month and the Alaska House voted down the entire settlement, which included civil and criminal cases.

Negotiations among Exxon, the state and the federal government resumed earlier this month and reportedly were concluded over the weekend. The trial of federal criminal charges against Exxon over the Exxon Valdez spill is scheduled to begin Oct. 7 in Anchorage.

Exxon spokesman Bill Smith in Irving, Tex., declined to comment on the new settlement. Justice Department spokesman Doug Krovisky in Washington said he was unaware of any settlement.

Under the previous settlement, Exxon and a subsidiary agreed to plead guilty to four misdemeanors and pay a record $100-million fine. Two felony pollution charges would have been dropped.

Exxon also would have paid $900 million over 11 years to restore damaged natural resources. That money would have settled the state’s civil claims against Exxon and any future claims by the federal government. The Alaska House had urged that Exxon pay $1.2 billion upfront.

Lloyd Miller, an attorney involved in the case, said Sunday that he thought it unlikely the total amount of civil and criminal fines against the oil company in the revised settlement would be much different from the previous agreement. Miller represents Native Alaskans who agreed to drop their lawsuit against the state and federal governments over damages suffered in the spill.

“I don’t think we’re talking a substantially different settlement here,” he said.

Miller said he believed that the criminal fine possibly could be increased to between $200 and $300 million, with a corresponding decrease in the civil penalty.

He noted that Hickel had previously said he thought it would be difficult to get a better deal than the one obtained in the first settlement. Such a statement foreclosed a significant revision, Miller predicted. “He boxed himself in.”

Further, increasing the criminal fine but decreasing the civil penalty would actually result in less money spent on the clean up, said Macon Cowles, a Boulder, Colo., attorney representing environmental groups suing Exxon. “Criminal fines are paid to the U.S. Treasurey and wouldn’t go to help restoring the environment,” he said.

The first settlement would have been the largest awarded in an environmental damage case in U.S. history. It would have provided immediate cash to continue the spill cleanup and avoided years of lengthy and costly court battles.

Opponents argued that the criminal fine was inadequate. They also noted that the settlement’s true value was far less than $1 billion because of the effects of inflation over the 11-year payout period.

Pressure has been building on Exxon to settle the government litigation. In the past two weeks, Native Alaskans and other private interests agreed to drop their civil spill lawsuits against the state and federal government.

In exchange for dropping the lawsuits, the governments agreed to share with the private plaintiffs their research on the spill’s damage and Exxon’s liability.

The tanker Exxon Valdez spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound when it slammed into a reef in 1989.

Joseph Hazelwood, the ship’s captain, was accused of drinking on shore before the tanker left Port Valdez, but he was acquitted of state charges that he operated the ship while intoxicated.