Citation Needed - Exxon Valdez

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a major environmental disaster that occurred in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The spill occurred when Exxon Valdez, an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 6 mi (9.7 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. The tanker spilled more than 10 million US gallons (240,000 bbl) (or 37,000 tonnes)[1] of crude oil over the next few days.[2]

Hello and welcome to citation needed, podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. internet and that's how it works now. I'm Heath and I'll be the booie voter under the influence for this maritime disaster. And I'm joined by three sober sailors, Eli Noah and Tom, and also Cecil, who is fun. Hey, hey, there's a bag, just because I don't drink doesn't mean I'm sober. George is sober. That's a great idea. Great idea. Heath. I'll just go ahead and let the thin veneer of control that I'm holding on to slip from my fingers. I'm sure fun's the word we're all going to use after that. It's cool.

Yeah, maybe. Thank you, Heath. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers, you are. Cheers, buddy. Cheers. Indeed.

Cecil's fun. So, Noah, what person plays thing, concept, phenomenon, or event? Are we going to be talking about today? Today, we're going to be talking about the Exxon Valdez. Uh-huh. And this is because you just got back from Alaska and you want to turn the episode into My Vacation Slides, the podcast? I did read the article and I'm ready to talk about it.

Heath, yes. All right. So what is the Exxon Valdez? Alaska is a vast and beauteous land filled with soaring snow cap mountain peaks, hearty megafauna and majestic fields of purple wildflowers. Now, of course, it would be wildly oversimplifying things to act like Alaska is one singular biome. It's too big for that. The ecosystems there range from ice fields and alpine tundra to boreal forests and even coastal rainforests. Guys, let's all drop our pencils at the same time.

Maybe he'll freak out and leave. I don't spook as easily as you do, Eli. Now, our tendency is to... I love that 90% of the audience have no fucking idea why he said that. I did a flip with the pencil. Now, our tendency is to think of the history of Alaska as beginning when homo sapiens crossed the burying straight and poured into the Americas for the first time. Yeah, I like that Noah thinks that we all have any tendency at all to think of the history of Alaska.

If you were called upon to think of that. But to understand it's rugged, ominous terrains, you really have to go back to the ice ages and consider the titanic glaciers that carved out the modern landscape. So glaciers, as we all know except maybe Eli, are formed when snow fails to melt over a long period of time, right?

So the weight of new snow pushes out all the air bubbles in the snowpack below it, forming these gorgeous blue mountains of ice, often miles across. And when those glaciers recede, either because an ice age is coming to an end or because switching to renewables would be a whole big thing. They carve out these gorgeous valleys and fjords. And that's what gives Alaska its distinct panorama of natural beauty.

Okay. To be there, I didn't know that. But if you're going to point out whenever I don't know a thing you're talking about, you're going to triple the lengths of our episodes, Noah. Yeah, I had to hit the runtime somehow on this one. Now, one of the most spectacular examples of this glacial landscaping is found in an area known as Prince William Sound, an inlet of water that is so still that when you go on a glacier cruise of it, the motherfuckers offer a no sea sickness guarantee or your money back,

which is fucking remarkable to anybody who has ever vomited their way through a whale watching cruise in literally anywhere. or been in pre-show shenanigans with Eli. We're talking about one of the most pristine, diverse, and beautiful places in the world. So if you think about it, it's kind of the perfect place to put the terminus of the trans-alaska pipeline system. It's got to be called something else now

or the government's going to loudly remove it from service like they do anything else that's trans. Right, it won't be able to go to the bathroom. We put one pipeline into the magical inlet of glacial serenity and kill the entire ecosystem. him one time, and these nimbies won't let it go for decades. We have to build stuff. So the first European explorer to enter the sound was Captain James Cook, who putts

around the Gulf of Alaska for quite a while looking for the Northwest Passage, for so damn long, in fact, that every major thing up there is kind of named after his expedition, or the name has been wrestled back by indigenous Alaskans until Trump decides to be more racist about it again. Now, when Cook first discovered the already inhabited area, he named it Sandwich Sound after his patron, the Earl of Sandwich. Later the same year, it would be renamed in honor of the 13-year-old Prince William, who was serving as a midshipman in the Royal Navy at that time. Okay. Well, now my Bar Mitzvah seems really lame by comparison.

Right? I'd enjoy it while you can, because by the end of this administration, it's going to be renamed Calfee Fifee Sound, I believe. On the map. Now, of course, Cook's expedition just named the big shit. That's a mountain. Very large rocks. Cider. Graving churches.

So what I'm saying is that he didn't have time to name every little nook and cranny. And since they were just going to replace his awesome, delicious sounding names after snibbling brats that probably had somebody else squeeze out their fucking toothpaste for him anyway. Why bother with all the good names? So that job fell to Spanish explorer Salvador Fidalgo. who would later name a number of features within the sound, including the Port of Valdez, which he named in honor of Spanish naval officer Antonio Valdezzi Basin.

And I don't know anything about that dude at all, but I'm willing to bet that he had a more impressive naval career than Prince William did. Yeah, probably. But now he's like the fucking Steve Chernobyl of oil spoof. Well, that's true. Yeah, no, you're right. It hurts. No, of course, at the time these features were being named,

there was some amount of ambiguity about whose features they were, among Europeans, that is. The people who had lived there for thousands and thousands of years were pretty consistent on their answers. But from 1732 to 1867, the Russian Empire claimed colonial possession of all the Northern Pacific Coast territories of the Americas, then collectively known as Russian America, by Russians. Brits knew them as far west Canada, and Americans knew them as generally available. but conflicting colonial claims on paper were a pretty common occurrence in the 1700s. Those questions were generally adjudicated by who was actually there. I'm sorry, which Europeans were actually there. And in the late 1700s and early 1800s, that was Russia.

Yeah, luckily, Russia would never rely on such a barbaric system of land ownership ever again. Right. Yeah, listen, Dimitri, you keep saying finders, keepers, but this is my house. you can't finders, keepers, my house, Dimitri. Now, Russia's claim on Alaska. You can Sarah Palin's house if you want. You can see it from there.

I can understand. Right, obviously. But so Russia's claims on Alaska would only last until 1867, when reeling from a humiliating defeat in a war of aggression in Crimea, for a bunch of Europeans all opposed them all at the same time, and they wound up desperately short of money. And completely unable to defend the area in case of another war,

Russia sold the region to America for the absurdly low price, even by the standards of the day, of $7.2 million. What did Carlos Santayana say? It doesn't matter. Go ahead. I love the history. I love whoever managed to finagle that $1.2 million on there. No, no, let's speak.

So, now that would be the equivalent, by the way, of about $129 million today. That's for a region that covers over 665,000 square miles or 1.7 million square kilometers. That is 17% of the total land area of the United States. Jesus. America just look in between Kansas and Missouri for change that might have fallen back there. J.D., get out of here. Yeah, out of here. Scoot-fugger.

Scoot. Get out of the couch metaphor, asshole. today Russia is super bitter about the sale because we very obviously ripped them the fuck off

but it's worth noting that Russia had been trying to offload Alaska onto any goddamn buddy for years by the time America agreed to take it

Alaska here Get your Alaska here It really was it was like that fucking that shitty airplane that Cutter finally talked Trump

into taking it was and is of course a giant frozen wasteland that's mostly uninhabitable, and at least at the time, there were known, like, major mineral deposits known anywhere in the fucking area. In fact, in the aftermath of the purchase, it was popularly

known as Seward's Folly in America, after then Secretary of State William H. Seward, who negotiated the deal. That negative appellation, though, was swept into the historical dustman in 1896 when prospectors struck gold. Not in Alaska at first, mind you, they found it in northwestern Canada, but that set off the Klondike gold rush that spilled into Alaska. And though smaller and colder than the Californian variety, it still saw over a hundred thousand people trek north to the Klondike goldfields to make their fortune. Only about 30 to 40 percent of them actually made it, though, because fucking Alaska and fucking 1800s.

Well, what would you do for a Klonda? And he's dead. Ah, beautiful time full of Kodi-A-Haw. moments. I think you mean Kodak moments, Tom. Very much do not. He doesn't. He doesn't. Yeah, I'll skip over the Tom essay portion of this and then move

straight on to 1968. God, I wish I was dead. Yeah, I did it. So, 1968, that's when the gold discoveries paled in comparison to what Atlantic Richfield Oil Company found there. Guess what it was? They struck oil in Prudow Bay

discovering what was, what is today, the 21st largest known oil reserve in the world, and I think it would have been like the 14th largest back then. It is the largest oil field in Alaska, but it is not the only one in Alaska, as it turns out. I'm coming to believe that all of the oil in the world was somehow purposely deposited in the least desirable places of the world, right? Like, get the barrens, the Middle East, the remote wilderness of Alaska, Texas. Yeah, Houston. Yeah, exactly. access. The traffic. Now, so as great as it was to suddenly have these massive national oil reserves right about the time OPEC was starting to flex its political muscle, they came with a bit of a problem. The vast majority of the oil in Alaska is found right along its northernmost edge, right in the least hospitable part of the state, which puts you high on the running for least hospitable place on Earth. That made it extremely hard to drill there. But even once you managed to drill, it was extremely hard to get the crude that.

you were pumping out of the earth anywhere that you could refine it. Enter the 800-mile long trans-alaska pipeline. Now, I should say the construction of the trans-alaska pipeline is a marvel of both engineering and hubris, because 800 miles of metal pipe is hard to put up anywhere, right? But most of the area they were going through had no roads, no towns, no nearby airports. It was mountainous and craggy and frozen 11 and a half months a year or 12, depending on what part. Keep in mind that when you build shit in Alaska, you have to cover the ground with tons of gravel first lest the heat of your construction start melting the permafrost beneath it and making it sag. And of course, its remoteness also makes it that much harder to maintain because if there's a problem,

you can't just fucking drive out to wherever the issue is. I mean, you can, but if you do, you live there now. Right. Now you have a new issue. Yeah, new problem. Yeah. So it's worth noting here that Alaska is also quite prone to earthquakes. In fact, when they started constructing the pipeline in 1969, they were only five years removed from the second largest earthquake ever recorded. That would be the Good Friday Quake or the Great Alaskan earthquake. That motherfucker measured a colossal 9.2 on the Richter scale. The quake killed 139 people. It wiped out, whole fucking towns, and it caused over $300 million in damage, which is pretty close to the cost of everything in Alaska in 1964, right? And the epicenter of that earthquake, by the way, was pretty much exactly where the new pipeline was slated to end. Well, the key is to put a vinegar pipeline right next to the oil. One, it shakes or gold. Hey, what was our load-bearing croutons? We got there, Jim. It'll be fine. But when it came time to irreparably destroy the irreplace

ecosystem of Prince William Sound. It turns out it wouldn't take an act of God so much as just a drunk guy. Step aside, God. I've got this. But first, we're going to take a quick break for some operable enough.

Look at it, Johnson. A miracle of innovation. Indeed it is, sir. Indeed it is. Three thousand barrels of oil flowing down the line. They might not say it, but we just put the goddamn U.S. of A back on the map. Yeah. Yeah, we did.

Everybody. Yeah. What are we doing? What are you guys doing? I'm sorry, but who are you? Oh, I'm the captain of the boat. That boat right there. That oil tanker?

Yep. Oil tanker. Aye. Me. Salute. Ow. Fuck. Oh.

Sorry. Sorry. Are you? You okay? Yeah, I'm fine. Good. Right in the base. Because I'm on my last chance.

You know what I mean? No. We don't. Ah, that's not. Never mind. This is almost exactly what happened. Yeah, it is. Okay, Susan, there's no need to be rude.

Try to save lives here. Well, fine. That's why you're doing it. Hey, Tom, what's the matter? Oh, I got caught double dipping at the blood bank again. You know, that's Susan, she's a real crank. I'm also here. Why are you double-dipping at the blood bank?

Hey, Eli, I have four kids and a haley at my house. I got to do anything I can to offset my wireless bill. Well, Tom, also here, by the way, why don't you try Mint Mobile? What's... No, what? No, I'm answering my... I'm actually answering my own. Hey, hey, hey, wait, so don't, stop, stop, stop.

What's Mint Mobile? Come on. Waste of a tooth. And my eye. With mint, you get the coverage and speed you're used to, but for way less money. And for a limited time, Mitt Mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for $15 a month. So while your friends are sweating over data overages and surprise charges, you'll be chilling, literally and financially. I don't know, guys. So I have to change my phone number.

Not with Mitt Mobile. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text, delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Plus, you can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Okay, but have you tried it? I sure have. I switched to Mint Mobile when they became a sponsor. I love that I get the same amazing service for a fraction of the price. That's why I know illusions personally endorse MintMobile. All right, guys. I'm sold. Where do I sign up? This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer in your three-month

unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash citation. That's mintmobile.com slash citation. Front payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 a month, limited time new customer offer for first three months only speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan taxes and fees extra cement mobile for details hey thanks guys where's cecil what's been mobile late way late stupid air vents And we're back. I'm a scotchy-scotch. All right.

What we're doing? So, on November 26th of 1984, after Marine Drills and Prince William's sound, the Coast Guard's director for Alaska operations sent a letter to his superiors, warning that the Port of Valdives was unprepared to, quote, efficiently respond to a major spill event, end quote. Specifically noting that, quote, it appears that the Vicoma boom and or deployment vessels used may not be

adequate to handle the harsh environmental conditions of Port Valdez, end quote. The Coast Guard proceeded to do fuck all about it. Moon, nerd abundance. Let's go. We're just doing it. Yep. Now, that letter would prove prophetic at 12.04 a.m. on March 24th of 1989, when the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker slightly longer and almost twice as wide as the fucking Titanic, ran a ground on Bly Reef in the middle of that pristine sound we were just talking about, and spilled 11 billion gallons or 260,000 barrels worth of crude oil into the sea.

And for 24 hours or so, nobody could do a goddamn thing about it. And for the 320,000 or so hours since then, nobody could do anything sufficient to contain the damage. Well, just fly in a giant loaf of Italian bread, man. Right? What's what I'm saying?

Get an airlifting some shaker cheese, maybe a little cracked pepper. But do not fill up on oil spill. You will ruin your climate change. You really will, yeah. I'm so hungry now. So, yeah, right? Hey, podcast listener, if you pay for the patron version, you can hear he sneak into the kitchen and make himself a snack for the rest.

I already had the stuff ready. So we need to start the story with Captain Joseph Hazelwood, who spent the evening before the ship launched at a local bar, consuming himself some alcohol. Now, much will be made of Hazelwood's drunkenness after the spill. And I know that the idea of a sea captain drinking at a bar is. a little bit jarring, but I want to be clear from the start that the whole drunken skipper thing is an element deliberately promoted by Exxon so that they would have a scapegoat. There is, as near as I can tell, zero evidence that this guy's drunkenness the night before or night of had anything to do with the oil spill, which happened by the way while he was asleep and not fucking passed out

drunk, right? Like it happened at the time that he was scheduled to be sleeping. That being said, he did have some drinks and then go be in charge of a giant fucking. boat full of oil he just didn't crash it during that part of it the evening. He wakes up to the crash and the horns just honking continuously.

He's leaning out. You gotta blow in the tube for me. I'm not allowed to start. I'd say it's weird that Noah paused his essay to defend the competency of the inebriated,

but then I remembered that it's two-thirds of our company. Yeah. Well, there's that. Well, three-thirds if you leave your mango nectar out long enough. Oh, yeah.

Never again. So the Valdives shows up in Valdives and docks at the Marine Terminal at 11.30 p.m. on March the 22nd. At this point, they start pumping oil into it and as you know, if you've ever filled your fucking car up in the winter in a place that has winter, the colder it is, the longer that shit takes.

And when you're an oil tanker that holds over 50 million gallons, I said billion earlier when I meant millions. It spilled 11 million gallons. But the tanker holds over 50 million gallons obviously takes a little longer, like pretty much a full fucking day. Which now that I think about it, It's also about how long it takes to fill your car up on a winter morning in Illinois.

But at any rate, they get done filling his shit up the following day at about 9.12 p.m. And leave the terminal. Sorry, not about it. It's exactly 912. It's a maritime shit. It's always down to the minute like that. So I can tell you that they left the terminal at 912 and they clear the dock at 921. And crashed.

Got on the stopwatch. Boop right there. Perfect. It feels like there's a better use for my time. But I got it. I could have been steering this whole time. Yeah. So at 925, Captain Hazelwood heads to his cabin, and yes, he had been drinking that night at the local bar.

He hadn't been steering the ship at any point, though. That duty belonged to Harbor Pilot, William Murphy, and third mate Gregory Cousins. And for the first part of this trip, the first like seven miles or so where they're pushing away from the terminal, they're also accompanied by a tugboat. By 11.24 p.m., the harbor pilot fucks off for the night and leaves the ship to third mate cousins. Hazelwood does pop back into the bridge for a few minutes as the harbor pilot is knocking off for the night, but by 1147, he's gone for the night, too. Yeah, we put that smaller steering wheel in there for the captain. It's not connected to anything.

He just comes in from the bar, and he makes vroom, vroom sounds until he passes out. It's a whole thing. The screen's just running the demo for Mario Card. He thinks he's playing. You'd think he would notice on his steering wheel. It says little tikes on this side, but he seems happy. You know, we pronounce it T-Ks, and he just assumes it's foreign. He assumes he's true.

Now, at this point, the best thing. Veldees is sailing slightly outside of the normal shipping lanes because there are icebergs floating around in the normal shipping lanes. It's a terrible fucking place to put shipping lanes. But apparently avoiding icebergs is one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't propositions when you're a giant boat because it's this diversion that would ultimately run them a ground. Well, that and the fact that Cousins didn't wake up the guy who was supposed to relieve

him that night. That would have been second mate Lloyd Lecane Jr. But Lecane had just done a brutally long stretch of work. So Cousins felt sorry for him and he was like, eh, what's the worst that could happen? if I let him sleep another hour or so, right? Okay, well, this, like so many of life's little problems, could have been easily avoided with a simple electrical taser shock watch alarm clock.

Tom, I know you are the one who said that joke, but I'm picturing it's said by an oil-covered pelican and it's way funny here. If only there was something from history where they famously had a problem with icebergs in America's disaster. What did George Sempty? to say about history, I forget.

You know. Did I call him Carlos Santayana earlier? You did? And I was the guitar player? I wonder what that cool guitar guy had to say about history. Oh, there you go. At least you didn't get all the chaos rigged up like no of the fucking idiot. Yeah, right, exactly, right.

So the worst that could happen came in the form of able seaman Robert Kagan going, hey, shouldn't that Starboard Light be on our port side, followed very shortly after by what cousins described as, quote, a bumpy ride. Not a good thing in your boat. Yes, exactly right. So that bumpy ride consisted of six sharp jolts. Those jolts, by the way, would be Bly Reef. Now, the second cousins realized they were in trouble.

He did ring the captain, but the ship ran around literally while they were on the phone. So there was probably a weird like, you know what? Never mind now. Moment. Now you're still up there. Throw it in reverse and then forward again. See if you can rock it. Rock.

I'm going to put some kitty litter. I'm going to put some kitty litter. Sand, get some sand. I'm going to share out the booze. I'll be up in like 20 minutes. No, so, okay, so ultimately, the ship got stuck on a pinnacle of rock in almost exactly its midsection. Eight of the ship's 11 cargo holds were breached as it lurched its way across the reef. About six million gallons of crude oil spilled out into the pristine waterway within the first few hours.

Another four and a half would just ooze out of there before they could contain the spill. And if you're thinking, hold on a second, don't huge oil tankers have, like, radar or something that warns you when you're about to run a ground before it's literally too late to stop? And yes, they do and did. Even in 1989, those ships were outfitted with a Raytheon collision avoidance system or Raycass, but the one on the Valdez wasn't fucking working and hadn't been working for a year, a fact that Exxon was very much aware of. there's just a guy whose job it was to sit on the bow and scream ECHO off into the distance Hey, Echo Guy, I don't really get your system You can't really do anything with that

Hey, start yelling Marco And let us know if it comes back as Polo And then we'll steer on that I just want to pop in here with another quick note of perspective The Raytheon collision avoidance system Cost as near as I can tell brand new in 1989 About $70,000 Oh, my God.

The prior year in 1988, Exxon earned 5.8 billion in profits. So that means if they had purchased a brand new collision system, Exxon's profits would have been reduced by 0.012%. So, wow. Yeah, it's a good thing that we don't let them be in charge of our environment anymore. So in the immediate aftermath of the spill, it became clear that nobody had ever given sufficient thought to what the fuck they would do if something like that happened. The first response was to dump a chemical dispersant called two butoxy ethanol onto the spill.

This was done by a helicopter that was owned by a private company and mostly it missed. Which is a pretty large oil spill. Whoops. Yeah, right. It's a fairly large oil spill. Everywhere.

Yeah, right. It's everywhere. It's not left. It's not left. Guys, did you drop it up? What the fuck happened? well but then a bunch of people were like hey guys is is dispersed what we're going for here and and then before all the sensible people could say well no obviously in unison somebody

else was like hey um is two butoxy ethanol toxic and yes it is cool it was later identified as one of the agents that caused liver kidney lung nervous system and blood disorders and Clean-up crews. Jesus. Hey, hey, what if instead of containing the problem, we kind of, you know, spread it out more, but poisonously? Huh?

No, that sounds good. But here's the thing. Then we'd have two poisons, right? You know what? I'm going to get some poison to spread out the second one. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Drop it off.

Try spraying it up. Yeah, spread up. So the next step was to deploy these booms and skimmers, right? These were supposed to scoop all the oil up from the water surface, but the oil outsmarted them by going under them. Once again, the Italians lie to us. Plus, and this is, this amazes me, the skimmers kept getting clogged with, get this, crude oil,

which is what they were designed, because that shit's pretty sludgy, it turns out. But, of course, skimming oil off the water didn't do shit for the oil that had already caked up on inlets and shorelines. So they went through and just, fucking power wash that shit with hot water. Did that kill all the lichen, plankton, clams, muscles, fungi, and microbes that make up the base of the entire goddamn food chain in that area?

Why do you keep being a fucking bummer with all your bummer questions? Is this when they brought in the ducks to soak it all out? Yeah, I'm sorry. Noah, I'm still very confused. So help me out. There's oil on everything all up on the shores. So we're going to hose it off of the shore. Yep.

But like where? Because there's no place called off. I don't. Have we tried hosing it up? I don't know. Okay. Well, we're just spit falling here. We're brainstorming.

Can we make a drain? Does that make sense what I just said? This is legitimately. We're just spraying it back into the water. That's exactly. They were just like, no, no. we're going to spray it into the water where all those great booms and skimmers are clogged the fuck up. It's like the, the level of incompetence is just staggering in all of this.

The Wikipedia article, by the way, describes the disaster as, quote, the costliest disaster ever with no direct human fatalities, end quote. All those words are necessary to make that a true statement, right? So Exxon has spent an estimated $7 billion between cleanup efforts, legal settlements and court-ordered fines, a number that's dwarfed by how much it would cost if they actually cleaned it the fuck up. But it's estimated that to date, only about 10% of the oil that was spilled was actually removed from the environment at all. The rest of it is still just floating around. They're all dispersed or fucking digging its way into Alaskan beaches. And while there were no direct human fatalities, there were plenty of direct fatalities.

It's estimated that within the first days of the spill, it killed 22 orcas, 12 river otter, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles between 100,000 and 250,000 sea birds, and most devastating of all, because they're the cutest, 2,800 sea otters. 12 river otters are like, damn, this isn't even my neighborhood, man, what's all? I don't mean, supposed to be here today. I think they only counted the bald eagles separate from the other birds because they hoped it would make America care. It didn't really.

I'm surprised they don't have a separate number for baby ducks in there, to be honest with you. Yeah. And it's also worth emphasizing the word direct when it comes to human fatalities, right? Because no population was hit harder than herring and salmon by this. Oil is incredibly toxic to their eggs and

whole generations of herring and salmon were lost. That meant, of course, that whole fishing communities were lost. Like whole towns. That means people committed suicide and died from other poverty-related afflictions at a higher rate than they otherwise would have. And you have to add to

all the diseases and shit people got from just having all this shit in their environment, especially the cleanup crews, which of course were largely made up of Alaska's poorest residents. Yeah, we keep spraying at it with these hoses, but it's not disappearing. I have cancer. Well, have you tried spraying with a hose? All right, well, you're not going to like this, but there's a chemo dispersant we can use. Oh, God.

Yes, it is poison. No, it's toxic, too, yeah, as it turns out. It works as well as the other. one, though, is the good thing. So Exxon did their best to pin all the blame they could on Hazelwood. He was fired and charged criminally. Initially, he was charged with criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, and piloting a vehicle while intoxicated. Later, though, after 20-plus people testified that he didn't appear to be intoxicated at any point in the evening or night, he was convicted of nothing but, quote, misdemeanor negligent discharge of oil, and quote. Alastra. Yeah, no, yeah, right. It says something that they warn you about in Leviticus or something, yeah.

Okay, but the idea of Exxon Valdez trying to be the guy in the hot dog suit from, I think you should leave is chef's his level. Oh, man, we're going to find who fucking did this. Yeah, yeah, right, yes, right. So, and for their part, by the way, Exxon did the responsible thing and sued everybody and blamed everybody. They sued the state of Alaska first for refusing to approve their use of dispersant chemicals for the first day of the oil spill, a claim that was refuted by the fact that Exxon didn't need the state's permission because they already had a pre-approved cleanup protocol that included the use of those dispersants. So when that got thrown out, they sued the Coast Guard for having given Mariners licenses to the incompetent crew that Exxon hired. What is happening? Right.

And when that didn't work, they sued the Coast Guard for not giving him permission that they didn't need. to use those chemical dispersants. The CEO is just in his office with the general counsel, furiously spinning the wheel of blame. What genuinely were, though, yeah. Sir, it landed on Cracker Barrel's logo again. Let's put that in your pocket for a later time.

Hey, can we sue them for not suing us out of existence? Them can be whoever. Can we sue them for that? Right. Well, now, the Exxon also did get themselves sued quite a bit. But mostly they fucked their way out of that. Like, at one point, they signed a secret settlement with like seven of the largest corporate fisheries where they agreed, the fisheries agreed to pay Exxon back any court order restitution. A fact that Exxon failed to disclose to the jury that was thus handing down a completely meaningless verdict for a thing that they'd already like secretly settled.

That feels illegal. It's so close to illegal. Also, the judge said that. The judge was like, oh, this is so close to illegal. They also appealed every fine that they had and they appealed it all the way to the Supreme Court who, and I'm sure this is going to shock you, consistently sided with the giant corporation

over the air we breathe and water we drink. Right? So we ruled that they don't owe you any money and I know no one asked us to do this, but we decided their vote is now 60 million times more important than yours. That too, yeah. You guys should do campaign finance reform. Can we sue you for not doing campaign finance reform and letting us exist?

Also, we're all wearing these collars. that kill us and we're giving every American a button that turns them on, but Obama said we go high once at a speech so no one's going to push their fucking button, are you? How about the good old days that this shit represents Sam Alito in this, in this fucking case, he recused himself just because he owned a bunch of Exxon stock back in the day. What? Wow. Yeah, we used to be so much more ethical.

One time a billionaire paid me to fish in Alaska, so I can't rule on this one. right. Yeah. I have his button. As for the ship. Just all of Exxon's lawyers, dressed like a duck covered in oil, like the hot dog guy. Now, as for the ship itself,

well, despite what many people assume, it was not retired after the spill. It was just renamed. They called it the Exxon Mediterranean after they patched it up. And though it was never allowed back in Prince William's sound, it did continue to carry oil for a long fucking

time after that. What's more, its sister ship, the Exxon Long Beach never stopped running the Prince William Sound Route despite being the exact same design. Now, eventually, the Mediterranean Nevaldez was sold to a Chinese outfit and renamed Dong Fang Ocean, where it would go on to get up to its old ways and run into shit again. Specifically, a multi-flagged cargo ship in the South China Sea. Two years after that, it would be sold for scrap for an estimated $16 million. bucks. All right. If you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, besides campaign finance reform,

what would it be? We probably are going to get a good deal on Siberia once they lose that war in Ukraine. Ooh. And are you ready for the quiz? Oh, hell yeah. All right, Noah. Since you got to base your essay on your vacation, what should listeners look forward to from the rest of the cast?

A. An Icelandic story from Cecil's anniversary trip. B. Something about a Scottish castle from Heath's honeymoon. Or C. Tom will stop writing essays for this podcast. Well, okay, so secret answer, almost exactly A, but not quite. All right. Noah. What was the captain actually drinking that night? A, a Moscow fuel. B.

Black gold slager. C. Gasoline. D. Rum aground or E. Anything on the rocks. All right. Well, Cicel, I believe that is our first reference to cough syrup with purple hard candy.

I believe that's the first time that showed up. So I feel like it's got to be answer C. Gasoline. Oh, you are correct. Nice. All right, Noah. Long Island, Texas, T, stupid. Go ahead.

Noah, how do the corporate bigwigs wash their hands of this problem? A, it just never dawned on them to pay. B, they greased everyone's palm olive. C, not writing checks was their real joy. Or D, there's still a picture of a goddamn duck on my bottle of dishwash washing liquid because these fucking assholes will take even the most tragic shit and sell it back to our stupid asses as if it were

wholesome and heartwarming and then we buy it with a grin on our idiotic faces because we're a nation of stupid assholes who deserve it every time the orcas sink our yachts. Secret answer E, you remember how after 9-11 they sold the FDNY hats everywhere. Yeah.

That's great. Sure did. Never forget, no one. I miss Juliana. I do remember that I'll never forget All right You got them all right

You have one Noah Awesome Awesome awesome Well I want a Cecil essay next All right Well for Tom Cecil Noah and Eli I'm Heath

Thank you for hanging out with us We'll be back next week And Cecil will be an expert On something else Between now and then You can listen to cognitive dissonance The No Rogan experience Dear old dads

God awful movies Scatheathist Skeptocrat and D&D Minus And if you'd like to join the ranks of our beloved patrons. You can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media or take a look at show notes. Check out citationpod.com. Can you turn it? Nope. We've run up pretty hard.

Damn. Hey, guys, I heard like a real big bum. Like a real big. I'm okay? I brought a fireball, by the way. We've run aground, sir. we're losing oil fast. Oh, man.

Man. Did you hear me my side of a fireball? Yep. We heard. Oh. Okay. So did you want?

No. Got it. More from me? My little.