Less than two weeks before the somber anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill—one of the most ecologically damaging spills on record—a Norwegian tanker narrowly escaped dumping its 41-million-gallon cargo into the Gulf of Mexico.

The SKS Santilla suffered a “gaping hole” on its port side after colliding with a submerged oil rig that had been downed by Hurricane Ike and swept into the Gulf 65 miles south of Galveston, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle (cached version of the now unavailable original). In what could have served as an over-the-top public relations stunt for oil tanker safety measures spawned by the Exxon Valdez, the tanker’s double hull—mandated by Congress following the 1989 Exxon disaster—saved the Santilla’s cargo.

“This could have been a serious spill,” Dennis Kelso, Alaska’s commissioner of environmental conservation at the time of the Valdez spill, told the Chronicle. “Because of that double hull that suffered damage on its exterior, there was no oil spill at all.”

While keeping the cork on millions of gallons of oil is certainly reason to celebrate structural improvements, many warn that policy makers cannot become complacent when it comes to safely transporting crude.

“We must remain ever vigilant to insure that we are doing everything possible to prevent this from happening again,” Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski stated on the eve of the Exxon Valdez anniversary. “While we can predict what the environmental impacts might be from a spill, we must never forget that the impacts on people and their lives are not so easily measured.”

The point that Alaskans and their environment are still mired in the impacts of the Exxon Valdez spill was not lost on the author of a New York Times editorial, which called on the Obama administration to think carefully about future U.S. energy strategy.

“…The Exxon Valdez still sends a powerful cautionary message: oil development, however necessary, is an inherently risky, dirty business—especially so in the forbidding waters of the Arctic.”