Alyeska Tapes Shed New Light on Valdez Spill : Disaster: Oil industry officials lacked gear and personnel to clean up the accident but tried to give the appearance that they did, transcripts indicate.

In the first days after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, top oil industry emergency officials lacked the equipment and personnel to clean up the accident while they tried to give the appearance that they did, according to taped telephone recordings recently released.

The taped conversations appear to support the state of Alaska’s claims that the oil companies did not have enough chemical dispersants and equipment available to clean up the spill to any significant degree. If Alaska can prove that claim, the state may be able to win stiff punitive damages it is seeking in a pending lawsuit against Exxon Corp. and Alyeska.

“We expect (the tapes) to show the jury that the state wasn’t at fault,” Alaska Assistant Atty. Gen. Craig Tillery said.

The conversations were secretly recorded by Alyeska Pipeline Services Co., the industry-owned company that operates the Valdez oil terminal. They offer the most revealing record so far of how Exxon coped with the spill.

Exxon and Alyeska contend that confusion among Alaska state agencies delayed approval for the emergency teams to use chemicals to disperse the oil, resulting in a larger and more costly cleanup effort.

In one conversation contained in a transcript released Tuesday by the Alaska attorney general’s office, then-Alyeska President George M. Nelson discussed other emergency measures.

“It doesn’t look well in the media, and we’re not taking them this story . . . (but) the equipment we have in our contingency plan and the equipment we got out there . . . four or five hours late frankly didn’t do a damn bit of good,” Nelson told Atlantic Richfield Co. executive Harold Heinze soon after the spill.

Later in the same conversation, Nelson told Heinze that the Valdez Coast Guard commander hoped to allow oil companies to resume tanker traffic within three or four days--even if it meant clearing a path through the spill.

Though the tapes had been obtained by some government agencies investigating criminal charges arising from the spill, congressional investigators and the National Transportation Safety Board apparently were unaware of their existence.