1989 Narragansett Bay oil spill

Last updated

On June 23, 1989, several hundred thousand gallons of fuel oil were spilled at the mouth of the Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island after the tanker MV World Prodigy ran aground on a reef near Aquidneck Island.

World Prodigy, a 532 feet (162 m) long ship operated by Ballard Shipping under the Greek flag, was inbound to Providence and Tiverton, Rhode Island when at about 16:40 local time she ran aground on Brenton Reef, about 1 mile (1.6 km) offshore from Brenton Point State Park, after passing the wrong side of a buoy marking the channel. [1] She had a cargo of about 8.1 million gallons of fuel oil. [1] The grounding damaged four of the ship's eight cargo compartments; early reports indicated that as much as a million gallons of oil had spilled, [1] but later estimates put the total at about 300,000 gallons. [2] Oil covered about 50 square miles and washed up on shore, but due to its low viscosity and choppy seas that broke up the slick it evaporated fairly quickly. [1] [3] The Coast Guard estimated that the cleanup cost about $2 million. [2]

The collision damaged the hull of World Prodigy in two places, [1] but she was floated off the reef in early July and repaired at a shipyard in New York City. [4]

After the collision, World Prodigy's captain, Iakovos Georgudis, was charged with two violations of the Clean Water Act and Ballard Shipping with one. [2] Both the captain and company pleaded guilty; Ballard paid $1 million and Georgudis $10,000 in fines. [2] In December 1990, the National Transportation Safety Board released the results of their investigation of the spill, finding that Captain Georgudis had been suffering from sleep deprivation and was distracted by working on paperwork at the time of the collision. [3] World Prodigy, having arrived at the mouth of the bay earlier than planned, had not taken on a harbor pilot, and shortly before she ran aground, Captain Georgudis had sent both his first officer and watchman away from the bridge to work on other tasks, which the NTSB judged left the ship "without a qualified deck watch officer for several minutes prior to the grounding." [3]

Related Research Articles

A double-hulled tanker refers to an oil tanker which has a double hull. They reduce the likelihood of leaks occurring compared to single-hulled tankers, and their ability to prevent or reduce oil spills led to double hulls being standardized for oil tankers and other types of ships including by the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships or MARPOL Convention. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster in Alaska in 1989, the US Government required all new oil tankers built for use between US ports to be equipped with a full double hull.

<i>Exxon Valdez</i> oil spill 1989 industrial disaster in Alaska

The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company that was bound for Long Beach, California struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 1.5 mi (2.4 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. and spilled 10.8 million US gallons (257,000 bbl) of crude oil over the next few days.

<i>Exxon Valdez</i> Oil tanker ship

Oriental Nicety, formerly Exxon Valdez, Exxon Mediterranean, SeaRiver Mediterranean, S/R Mediterranean, Mediterranean, and Dong Fang Ocean, was an oil tanker that gained notoriety after running aground in Prince William Sound spilling its cargo of crude oil into the sea. On March 24, 1989, while owned by the former Exxon Shipping Company, and captained by Joseph Hazelwood and First Mate James Kunkel bound for Long Beach, California, the vessel ran aground on the Bligh Reef resulting in the second largest oil spill in United States history. The size of the spill is estimated to have been 40,900 to 120,000 m3, or 257,000 to 750,000 barrels. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was listed as the 54th largest spill in history.

Bligh Reef

Bligh Reef, sometimes known as Bligh Island Reef, is a reef off the coast of Bligh Island in Prince William Sound, Alaska. This was the location of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. After the incident, 33 US Code § 2733 mandated the operation of an automated navigation light to prevent future collisions with the reef. Despite these efforts the tug Pathfinder ran aground on Bligh Reef on Dec 24, 2009, rupturing its tanks and spilling diesel fuel. Bligh Reef is also where Alaska Steamship Company's Olympia ran aground in 1910.

<i>Amoco Cadiz</i> Oil tanker which ran aground in Brittany, France (1978)

Amoco Cadiz was a VLCC owned by Amoco Transport Corp and transporting crude oil for Shell Oil. Operating under the Liberian flag of convenience, she ran aground on 16 March 1978 on Portsall Rocks, 2 km (1 mi) from the coast of Brittany, France. Ultimately she split in three and sank, resulting in the largest oil spill of its kind in history to that date.

Joseph Jeffrey Hazelwood is an American sailor. He was the captain of Exxon Valdez during her 1989 oil spill. He was accused of being intoxicated which contributed to the disaster, but was cleared of this charge at his 1990 trial after witnesses testified that he was sober around the time of the accident. Hazelwood was convicted of a lesser charge, negligent discharge of oil, fined $50,000, and sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service.

MV <i>Argo Merchant</i>

MV Argo Merchant was a Liberian-flagged oil tanker built by Howaldtswerke in Hamburg, Germany, in 1953, most noted for running aground and subsequent sinking southeast of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, causing one of the largest marine oil spills in history. Throughout the vessel's troubled past, she was involved in more than a dozen major shipping incidents including two other groundings; once in Indonesia while named Permina Samudra III, and again in Sicily while named Vari; and a collision in Japan.

<i>New Carissa</i> 20th-century freighter

MV New Carissa was a freighter that ran aground on a beach near Coos Bay, Oregon, United States during a storm in February 1999 and subsequently broke apart. An attempt to tow the bow section of the ship out to sea failed when the tow line broke, and the bow was grounded again. Eventually, the bow was successfully towed out to sea and sunk. The stern section remained on the beach near Coos Bay. Fuel on board the ship was burned off in situ with napalm, but a significant amount was also spilled from the wreckage, causing ecological damage to the coastline.

Ship grounding Impact of a ship on seabed or waterway side

Ship grounding or ship stranding is the impact of a ship on seabed or waterway side. It may be intentional, as in beaching to land crew or cargo, and careening, for maintenance or repair, or unintentional, as in a marine accident. In accidental cases, it is commonly referred to as "running aground".

Shenzhen Energy

Shenzhen Energy Group Company Limited, formerly Shenzhen Energy Investment Company Limited, is one of the main power generation companies in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It involves in developing all types of energies, researching and investing high new energy-related technologies. Huaneng Power International is now the second largest shareholder of Shenzhen Energy.

2009 USS <i>Port Royal</i> grounding 2009 shipwreck

The 2009 USS Port Royal grounding was a ship grounding by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser Port Royal off Oahu, Hawaii on 5 February 2009. The ship ran aground on a coral reef, damaging both the ship and the reef. The incident received wide press coverage in Hawaii, in part because of the damage caused to a sensitive coral environment, and also because the stranded ship was within sight of Honolulu off the airport.

2010 Great Barrier Reef oil spill 2010 oil spill

The 2010 Great Barrier Reef oil spill occurred on 3 April 2010, when the Chinese bulk coal carrier, MV Shen Neng 1 ran aground east of Rockhampton in Central Queensland, Australia. The vessel is owned by Shenzhen Energy Transport Co. Ltd.

<i>Jia Yong</i>

Jia Yong, formerly MV Shen Neng 1 is a Chinese bulk carrier built in 1993 as Bestore. She was sold in 2007 and renamed Shen Neng 1. In 2010, she ran aground off Great Keppel Island, Australia spilling oil into Great Barrier Reef waters.

<i>Rena</i> oil spill

The Rena oil spill occurred off the coast of Tauranga, New Zealand in October 2011. The spill was caused by the grounding of MV Rena on the Astrolabe Reef. The Rena was a container ship and cargo vessel owned by the Greek shipping company Costamare Inc., through one of its subsidiary companies Daina Shipping. The spill has been described as New Zealand's worst maritime environmental disaster.

The Torrey Canyon oil spill was one of the world's most serious oil spills. The supertanker SS Torrey Canyon ran aground on rocks off the south-west coast of the United Kingdom in 1967, spilling an estimated 25–36 million gallons of crude oil. Attempts to mitigate the damage included the bombing of the wreck by aircraft from the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Hundreds of miles of coastline in Britain, France, Guernsey, and Spain were affected by the oil and other substances used in an effort to mitigate damage.

The SS Wafra oil spill occurred on 27 February 1971, when SS Wafra, an oil tanker, ran aground while under tow near Cape Agulhas, South Africa. Approximately 200,000 barrels of crude oil were leaked into the ocean. The larger part of the ship was refloated, towed out to sea, and then sunk by the South African Air Force to prevent further oil contamination of the coastline.

Seaforth Channel Watercourse in Canada

Seaforth Channel is a channel in the Central Coast region of the Canadian province of British Columbia which is part of the Inside Passage - the 950 miles (1,530 km) passage between Seattle, Washington and Juneau, Alaska. The marine highway goes through Seaforth Channel on the way to Milbanke Sound, one of the open sea portions of the Inland Passage. Seaforth Channel which is part of the Prince Rupert/Port Hardy BC ferry route, extends in a westerly direction from Denny Island to Milbanke Sound between Denny Island, Campbell Island and the Wright group of islands on the south. In October 2016, a Texas-owned tug/barge transiting the Canadian waters of the Inside Passage without a local pilot was hard grounded on a reef at the entrance to Seaforth Channel in October 2016. More than 100,000 l of fuel contaminated the coast, coves and shores 20 km (12 mi) west of Bella Bella, the core community of the Heiltsuk Nation as well as the environmentally sensitive Great Bear Rainforest - Canada's contribution to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy (QCC), a network of forest conservation programs. Clean up response and salvage was criticized by the Heiltsuk, B.C. Premier Christy Clark and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In November in Vancouver the Prime Minister announced a $1.5B ocean protection plan to "create a marine safety system, restore marine ecosystems and undertake research into oil spill cleanup methods."

MV <i>Wakashio</i> oil spill 2020 oil spillage event on the Mauritius coast arising from a grounded bulk carrier

The MV Wakashio oil spill, Man-made Ecological and Economical Disaster, occurred offshore of Pointe d'Esny, south of Mauritius, close to the Marine Protected Area designated as the Second Wetland of International Importance under the ‘Ramsar Convention’ which is renowned for its remarkable coral garden and is home to more than 1,000-year old brain coral, the largest brain coral in the Indian Ocean,. After the Japanese bulk carrier Wakashio ran aground on a coral reef on 25 July 2020 at around 16:00 UTC. The ship began to leak fuel oil in the following weeks, and broke apart in mid August. Although much of the oil on board Wakashio was pumped out before she broke in half, an estimated 1,000 tonnes of oil spilled into the ocean in what was called by some scientists the worst environmental disaster ever in Mauritius. Two weeks after the incident, the Mauritian government declared the incident a national emergency.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Tanker Strikes Reef Off Newport, Spilling Oil in Narragansett Bay". The New York Times. June 24, 1989. Retrieved March 12, 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Captain and owners plead guilty to World Prodigy oil spill". UPI. August 16, 1989. Retrieved March 12, 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 "Captain Is Blamed for Oil Spill Off Rhode Island". The New York Times. December 18, 1990. Retrieved March 12, 2017.
  4. "The Nation". The Los Angeles Times. July 3, 1989. Retrieved March 12, 2017.

Coordinates: 41°26′35″N71°21′29″W / 41.443°N 71.358°W / 41.443; -71.358