Exxon Valdez
Exxon Shipping Company · Tanker · Scrapped 2012 · built by NASSCO (San Diego)
Exxon Valdez was an ordinary modern tanker until 24 March 1989, when she grounded on Bligh Reef, Alaska — and became the reason tankers are built the way they are.
Derived metrics
Computed by ships.fyi from the core specification — see how we calculate these.
How big is it, really?
The Exxon Valdez's length overall, against things you already know the size of.
The 747-8 bar is the longest airliner ever built — our sibling site aircraft.fyi measures everything that flies the same way.
One Exxon Valdez = 1.12 Titanics · 2.9 football pitches · 12 blue whales · 3.9 Boeing 747-8s laid end to end.
The numbers
| Length overall | 300.85 m |
|---|---|
| Beam | 50.6 m |
| Deadweight | 214,861 t |
| Hull | Single hull |
| Delivered | December 1986 |
| Grounded | 24 March 1989, Bligh Reef, Prince William Sound |
| Oil spilled | ≈10.8 million US gallons (≈37,000 t) of crude |
| Fate | Renamed repeatedly; beached for scrapping at Alang, 2012 |
Put the Exxon Valdez next to something
Last verified: 2026-07-15 · Spot an error? business@luck.fyi
What makes it different
Exxon Valdez is on this board for consequence, not size. Minutes after midnight on 24 March 1989, outbound from the Alaska pipeline terminal with a full cargo, she left the shipping lane to avoid ice and ran hard onto Bligh Reef. Eight of her eleven cargo tanks tore open; roughly 10.8 million gallons of North Slope crude went into Prince William Sound, eventually oiling around 2,100 kilometres of coastline in one of the worst environmental disasters in American history.
The regulatory response changed the entire industry. The US Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and matching international rules mandated double hulls on tankers and set phase-out dates for single-skinned ships worldwide — which is why every tanker elsewhere on this site, from the TI giants down, carries two complete skins of steel around its cargo.
The ship herself was repaired, exiled by name and by law — she was legally barred from Prince William Sound — and wandered the world under four more identities, ending as the ore carrier Oriental Nicety on the beach at Alang in 2012. The herring fishery she damaged has never fully recovered.
The Exxon Valdez line
The afterlife
Who operates the Exxon Valdez
No current operator — this ship's sailing days are over. The operators of record are below.