The double-cross (Exxon and other tankers)

[Robbien]

"It's a sad story," he said, "often told." He had joined the ship in Singapore, made one trip to the Gulf, then back to Japan. In Japan a replacement crew of Indians had come aboard, and the American crew had packed their bags and flown back to the United States.

To anyone familiar with the American Merchant Marine, this story is absolutely familiar. In order to maximize profits, shipping companies "flag-out" American vessels. A ship is taken out of American registry, and transferred to a "flag of convenience" country such as Panama or Liberia. This frees the owner to hire cheap foreign sailors and avoid strict regulations. It also allows them to avoid being held accountable for spills and accidents.

What makes this very familiar ritual worthy of notice is the history of the ship in question. Lately she's been known as the SeaRiver Mediterranean as she plied the world's oceans. But at her launch in 1986, her stack was painted with the overlaid Xs that are the insignia of Exxon. On her stern she bore the name Exxon Valdez.

. . .

Exxon is a modern corporation, and did not like to see its Exxon brand and the overlaid X trademark degraded by pictures of the stricken ship, her stack emblazoned with the "double cross." So they set up a holding company named SeaRiver, and transferred all their ships into it. The next time one gets in trouble the stack insignia won't be a huge negative advertisement. At the same time they changed the name of the Exxon Valdez to SeaRiver Mediterranean.

. . .

This is another familiar story. When talking to sailors about where they went on a ship it often ends with the line, "then we took one last load of oil to Singapore and rode her to the beach."

"The Beach" is a general term for the ship-breaking yards in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The empty ship is run up on the sand, and swarms of workers cut her up to supply the steel mills of Japan, China and Korea. The workers are paid $3 a day, and if they're injured that's too bad. Toxic wastes are spilled all over, but that's not a problem because Pakistan's environmental regulations are just this side of nonexistent.

http://belfast.villagesoup.com/AandE/story.cfm?storyID=53259

[firefox]

1. Exxon hasn't paid a dime on the oil spill

Wasn't Exxon fined like a billion dollars on the Valdez oil spill? Last year I read that they have not paid a dime of it. One thing that made the oil spill so bad was they went in with soap, like they were preparing for a Bu$h photo-op. The only thing is that the soap is a surfactant and allowed the oil to penetrate the surface tension and make the mess all the bigger. They should have fined them a billion just for being so dumb.

[LdyGuique]

2. The award was $5 BILLION -- and it's unpaid

And, I saw the CEO of Exxon the other night on a story about BP -- he said that since there were no studies done on Prince William Sound prior to the spill, how were they to know if the damage that surfaces every year doesn't have some other cause than the Exxon Valdez.