The Oil Pollution Act of 1990: Is there a Bright Future Beyond Valdez?
By Michael J. Uda
INTRODUCTION
Shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989, a tanker owned by the Exxon Shipping Company, the Exxon Valdez, struck ground on a well-marked navigation obstacle called Bligh Reef. The Valdez' cargo, 11 million gallons (approximately 270,000 barrels) of oil, began to spill into Prince William Sound, creating a slick that fouled the pristine waters off the Alaska coast. The spill also wreaked havoc on a number of environmentally sensitive state and national parks and wildlife refuges. The death toll among animals in the Prince William Sound region has been staggering, and the final “body count” may never be known.
The Exxon Valdez spill is the largest oil spill in the history of the United States. This disaster has spawned an enormous amount of litigation, and unsettled questions remain regarding the extent of Exxon's liability. One important consequence of the spill was that the long delayed comprehensive oil spill legislation, known popularly as the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA), finally was given the impetus it needed to pass Congress and to gain President Bush's signature.
The former statutory and regulatory regime for oil spills, existing prior to the OPA has been heavily criticized. Chief among these criticisms has been a concern that the federal government lacks clear statutory authority to mandate cleanup by private parties responsible for oil spills. Other questions include whether limits on liability under the former regime prevent all parties harmed from being fully compensated. This latter critique has focused on the statutory ceilings on liability for vessel or facility owners and operators who are responsible for an oil spill. Finally, some argue that the welter of applicable statutes under the former law created a maze of federal and state enforcement authority which has paralyzed both regulators and the regulated.
This note focuses upon whether the OPA can be expected to resolve or exacerbate these problems. The first section of this note discusses the former statutory regime with sufficient detail to illustrate the problems inherent in that scheme. These problems will be discussed in section two. Section three discusses the new regime and how it can be expected to address the problems of the old statutory and regulatory situation. The last section of the paper concludes with an answer to the following question: Are we better off with this legislation than we were before? While the recently enacted OPA is not a panacea for all of the problems that an oil spill can create, it is a marked improvement over the previous law.
Shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989, a tanker owned by the Exxon Shipping Company, the Exxon Valdez, struck ground on a well-marked navigation obstacle called Bligh Reef. The Valdez' cargo, 11 million gallons (approximately 270,000 barrels) of oil, began to spill into Prince William Sound, creating a slick that fouled the pristine waters off the Alaska coast. The spill also wreaked havoc on a number of environmentally sensitive state and national parks and wildlife refuges. The death toll among animals in the Prince William Sound region has been staggering, and the final “body count” may never be known.
The Exxon Valdez spill is the largest oil spill in the history of the United States. This disaster has spawned an enormous amount of litigation, and unsettled questions remain regarding the extent of Exxon's liability. One important consequence of the spill was that the long delayed comprehensive oil spill legislation, known popularly as the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA), finally was given the impetus it needed to pass Congress and to gain President Bush's signature.
The former statutory and regulatory regime for oil spills, existing prior to the OPA has been heavily criticized. Chief among these criticisms has been a concern that the federal government lacks clear statutory authority to mandate cleanup by private parties responsible for oil spills. Other questions include whether limits on liability under the former regime prevent all parties harmed from being fully compensated. This latter critique has focused on the statutory ceilings on liability for vessel or facility owners and operators who are responsible for an oil spill. Finally, some argue that the welter of applicable statutes under the former law created a maze of federal and state enforcement authority which has paralyzed both regulators and the regulated.
This note focuses upon whether the OPA can be expected to resolve or exacerbate these problems. The first section of this note discusses the former statutory regime with sufficient detail to illustrate the problems inherent in that scheme. These problems will be discussed in section two. Section three discusses the new regime and how it can be expected to address the problems of the old statutory and regulatory situation. The last section of the paper concludes with an answer to the following question: Are we better off with this legislation than we were before? While the recently enacted OPA is not a panacea for all of the problems that an oil spill can create, it is a marked improvement over the previous law.
