The accident happened in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The amount of oil spilled was 260,000 barrels. One way of keeping an oil spill small is to pump all of the oil off of the damaged supertanker onto another ship. To keep an oil spill contained you put booms around the oil spill. Once the oil spill is contained the oil is sucked up with large machines skimmers.
Some bacteria are able to digest petroleum and other hydrocarbons.
These bacteria are being intensivly investigated as possible to cleaning up oil spills. There are approximately 3,600 supertankers in the world. Only 500 of these have an extra lining of metal, The purpose of this extra lining of metal is to not allow the ship to rip open as easily.