Walter B. Parker Act, which was signed into law in 1980 by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, spilling an estimated 260,000 to 750,000 barrels of crude oil. The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a major environmental disaster for the state. Governor Steve Cowper, who held office at the time of the spill, appointed Walter Parker as the chairman of the Alaska Oil Spill Commission in 1989. The Alaska Oil Spill Commission was created by the Alaska state government to investigate the causes of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Aegean Sea tanker oil spill same area in A Coruña in November 2002, in which a tanker, "Prestige", carrying 77,000 tons of oil split into two and spilled its cargo. About 10,000 tons of oil was spilled but the sunken hull of "Prestige" is still leaking oil from her tanks to this day. Aegean Sea tanker oil spill The "Aegean Sea" tanker oil spill was a spill that occurred on 3 December 1992 when the double-bottomed Greek-flagged oil tanker, "Aegean Sea", en route to the Repsol refinery in A Coruña, Spain, suffered an accident off the Galician coast. The ship had successfully passed all required