ExxonMobil single hull turned away from Valdez terminal

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31 Mar 2009

A single-hulled panamax crude oil tanker belonging to US oil major ExxonMobil has been turned away from loading at a terminal in Valdez, Alaska. According to local reports, the US Coast Guard barred the S/R Baytown from its cargo of crude after cracks were found in the main deck and another part of the vessel which is designed to contain spills.
A Coast Guard spokesman was quoted saying that “on orders from the Coast Guard, the ship owner made temporary repairs in Valdez and then sailed out of Valdez on Saturday - without a load of oil - for permanent repairs.”
The 1984-built 58,646 dwt S/R Baytown is group owned by ExxonMobil, but managed and operated by SeaRiver Maritime Inc.
SeaRiver Maritime Inc. is a Houston-based subsidiary of ExxonMobil, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
Although the panamax crude oil tanker is double-bottomed, it is single-hulled on its sides.
The barring of the Baytown due to cracks seems to have vindicated critics of ExxonMobil, which has only recently come under fresh criticism for its continued use of single hulls even though single hulls now make up only 20% of the world's supertanker fleet.
20 years on after the Exxon Valdez disaster, ExxonMobil remains the largest Western charterer of single-hulled tankers to move crude, although Asian players still fix them, some almost exclusively, according to Upstream news agency.
But ExxonMobil hired more single hulls last year than the rest of the world's 10 biggest oil companies by market value combined, said Bloomberg.
Critics are asking why ExxonMobil still employs single hulls even as 151 countries have pledged to ban single hulls by 2015 in an effort to prevent oil spills.
British major BP has been quoted saying it “won't hire them because of the risk of leaking.”
A recent incident in the Gulf of Mexico involving a suezmax hired by BP saw the tanker's hull punctured, but the US Coast Guard credited the tanker's 'sturdy double-hull' for preventing an oil spill.
Bloomberg data indicates that other top ten oil majors such as Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Koch and Total did not hire any single hulls at all last year.

Source: Tankerworld