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Clean Up Techniques

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The oil company, Exxonmobil was responsible for the cleanup. Exxonmobil ended up spending around $2.1 billion to clean up the spill. The Alaskans ended up stepping up and helping because the oil company did not have enough workers to help clean up the spill. No one was educated and had no experience in how to go about and clean up the spill. They came up with three techniques during the process of cleaning the oil up.

The first technique was burning and it took place shortly after the spill. There were fire resistant booms attached between two ships (CITE). The two ships with the boom between them traveled through the main area of where the oil spill took the Prince William Sound. The purpose of the booms were used to help reduce the spread of the oil and polluting the shorelines and help the oil not get as thick. The burning method ended up not working as planned so they moved onto another technique trying to clean up the oil spill.

 The second technique that was used during the cleanup of the Exxon oil spill was mechanical cleanup. There were skimmers that were available shortly after 24 hours of the spill. Skimmers are a device to help recover the spill from the water’s surface. Since the oil sat for over 24 hours the thickness of the oil ended up clogging the skimmers. It would take too long to get the skimmers fixed so they tried transferring the oil from temporary storage vessels into containers that were more permanent. It was a challenge to transfer the oil because of its weight and thickness.

The third technique that was used to clean up the spill was chemical dispersants. The purpose of the chemical dispersants is to help break down the oil in the water. A private company helped out by flying a helicopter over the Prince William Sound with dispersant buckets. Since there was no wave action to be found within the water, it could not help mix the chemical dispersant with the oil. The chemical dispersants were not effective so the technique was discontinued.