Oil The Life Of Industry, Transportation, And Whole...

Oil: the life of industry, transportation, and entire economies. Oil is such an important resource for society, yet it is very dangerous if placed in the wrong hands. The major oil corporations handle most of the process: extracting, shipping, and refining the crude oil. When these oil companies make mistakes, the results are disastrous and the situation quickly spirals out of their control. One such disaster happened on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon supertanker, the Exxon Valdez struck a pristine reef in the Prince William Sound, Alaska. The Exxon Valdez oil spill exemplified how unprepared Exxon Mobil was to deal with the dangers inherent in the industry surrounding oil and any accidents which result from those risks. The spill†¦show more content†¦Exxon and multiple government agencies became involved in the largest oil cleanup operation ever. Because of its remote location, equipment and volunteers were hard to transport to the area. For more than an entire year, the clean up crews were hard at work, trying to undo what Exxon had so ignorantly done. The Exxon Valdez oil spill became known as the worst environmental disaster of human history. Prior to its departure from port, issues with the crew of the Exxon Valdez became apparent. First of all, the crew operating the ship was small. Such a small crew could not accommodate such a big ship because there were too many positions to be filled. Exxon had opted to cut down on the number of crew members in order to decrease operating costs. To put this into perspective, â€Å"Tankers in the 1950s carried a crew of 40 to 42 to manage about 6.3 million gallons of oil... the Exxon Valdez carried a crew of 19 to transport 53 million gallons of oil.† Having half the amount of people on the ship many times larger, created numerous instances where the officers had to break regulations, if they wanted to be able to operate. For example, two officers were required to be on the bridge at any given moment, but with an inadequately sized crew, this proved impossible. At the time of the crash, there was only one person on the bridge. This man, Gregory Cousins, was working overtime i n order to give a coworker some extra rest. Cousins,