Giant Oil Spill Imperils Alaska

The worst oil spill in American waters spread an ominous dark stain across the ice floes and fragile Alaskan ecology of Prince William Sound yesterday, after a giant oil tanker ran aground near the Valdez oil terminal.

Environmentalists said the six million gallon spill threatened ecological catastrophe in the rich fishing waters of the sound, which is close to the migratory route of 13 species of whale.

The 1,100ft Exxon Valdez, loaded with more than 1.2 million barrels of crude oil valued at nearly Pounds 15 million, was taking an unauthorized route through the sound to avoid ice floes from the Columbia Glacier when it hit a charted reef 25 miles from the port of Valdez.

The supertanker struck just after midnight, Alaska time, instantly rupturing several oil tanks, US Coastguard officials said. The port has been closed.

An estimated 150,000 barrels, or 6.3 million gallons, of thick crude oil gushed into the cold waters of Prince William Sound, while the stricken supertanker remained fixed on the reef and continued to leak.

A sister ship, Exxon Baton Rouge, is near the leaking Exxon Valdez, and officials were hoping that it could trans-ship oil from the stricken vessel. Once the Baton Rouge was alongside, pumping would take at least 36 hours before there could be any hope of refloating the beached tanker.

'There are no reported injuries, and we are estimating right now, based on soundings of the tanks and what we can see, that she has lost approximately 150,000 barrels,' Commander Stephen McCall, captain of the port of Valdez, said last night.

'It appears that the rate of release of the oil has been greatly reduced. It probably lost the largest portion when it ran aground, but it's still leaking out,' he added.

As clean-up crews were mobilized through the night, officials said they would have to wait until daylight before they could say how much of the oil could they yet tell whether the spreading slick was drifting ashore or heading south for the Alaskan Gulf.

'This would be an ecological catastrophe anywhere. In the delicate conditions of Alaska, we cannot begin to say how bad this could be. For a start, nobody knows how to clean oil from ice,' a Greenpeace spokesman, Mr Kelly Quirke, said yesterday. 'We have to stop treating Alaska as one big energy colony.'

The Exxon -owned tanker, heading for long Beach, California, had just taken aboard a full load of Alaska crude at Valdez. The terminal is the tran-shipment point from the 800-mile Alaska pipeline, which brings the oil overland from Prudhoe Bay on the Alaskan North Slope.

The spill is Alaska's seventh this year, and the third in the Valdez region.