Exxon asked to pay more to clean spill

[Legs]

Government wants $92 million more for Valdez cleanup

ExxonMobil on Thursday was asked to pay another $92 million to further clean up shorelines in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska, which still contain oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

The company said it will study the request by the Justice Department and the state of Alaska while calling the department's basis for making it "speculation and hypothesis."

The action was taken under a provision in a $900 million damage settlement in 1991 allowing the government to reopen the agreement in 2006 to consider issues unforeseen at the time.

The Justice Department said the need for an additional project was shown by a series of 2001 studies that document the presence of residual oil from the spill along beaches in the area. The government said in a written statement it had not anticipated the oil would remain toxic and continue to affect the area.

"By sending our plan ... we are aggressively seeking to restore natural resource damages unforeseen at the time of the 1991 settlement," Assistant Attorney General Sue Ellen Wooldridge said.

The Valdez ran aground in 1989 and leaked 11 million gallons of crude oil, polluting more than 1,000 miles of Alaska's shore and killing tens of thousands of birds and marine animals.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/01/exx...dez/index.html