Exxon still owes for Valdez spill

[zengrifter]

US: Exxon still owes for Valdez spill

Despite profits, oil giant holds billions awarded to victims

by Mike Lewis
Seattle Post-Intelligencer | March 13th, 2006

In 11 days, it will be 17 years.

Long enough for children to have been born, grown and graduate from high school, for boats to have been scrapped or replaced, for marriages, divorces and career changes, and for a fair number of fishermen to die in one of the many ways life and their chosen occupation offer.

The odd thing is that the day itself -- March 24, 1989 -- has become less momentous to many fishermen than the slow grind of the years that followed.

On that date, the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound and dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil. Five years later, an Anchorage jury awarded the fishermen and affected communities $5 billion in punitive damages.

Calculated on one year of the oil giant's profits, the class-action award has yet to be paid as ExxonMobil fights it in federal court.

...continued here - http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13390