PMV Valdez

The old Poseidon Oil tanker PMV Valdez (PMV stands for Poseidon Merchant/Marine Vessel) located in San Francisco docks.

According to the Camp Navarro central computer - transportation to the oil rig has been flagged as inaccessible due to security act 9837-334-27A: PMV Valdez has been disabled and a passkey is required for reactivation; base commander, Navarro outpost, currently holds the passkey (FOB).

The ship is equipped with an IFF transponder (Identify Friend or Foe). According to the tanker captain, it protects PMV Valdez from Poseidon guns, so other Poseidon things, eg. an oil rig won't fire at ship, when it comes into range.

Note: To prepare the tanker for travel to the oil rig FOB, Navcom parts and fuel are needed. If the Chosen One's intelligence is lower than 4, he or she won't have to cope with lack of fuel, FOB and Navcom parts - somebody will prepare tanker to travel.

Occupants
In 2241 on the Tanker resided a band of vagrants, led by the Capitan and Badger. Self-appointed tanker Captain was A. Ron Meyers, an A.W.O.L. Enclave technician from Navarro, described by Marc as tough old military guy. The vagrants themselves are a diverse collective of solitary wanderers, social outcasts and survivalists from across the wasteland. The vagrants immigrated to San Francisco for the tolerance and respect for secrecy there. The vagrants fought off various monsters inhabiting the tanker including centaurs, floaters and aliens. According to fallout Bible this monsters most likely crawled down there in search of a lair before the punks showed up.

Speculating - monsters could be apparently placed in the ship by Enclave animal handlers under security act 9837-334-27A.

The creatures were not eliminated entirely however and were residing in the cargo hold of the old tanker.

According to Fallout Bible
Ship may be old or very old by 2070s standards and no fusion technology was incorporated into its design - and it may be too difficult to retrofit the tanker to run on fusion (although getting the fob was easy). It is not known whether there were any tankers incorporating fusion power sources in the 2070s, although military vehicles would be a different story.

Poseidon Oil during the Pre-War years would not want its tankers using fusion cells because that would run contrary to the image of the company, despite its practicality. Plus, the idea of something so big running on something so small hurts its self-confidence.

The fact that the tanker runs on fuel drives home images of the real-world Valdez and suggests the dinosaur-era technology of the tanker. It also provokes images of the desperation of the Resource Wars, if somebody is a Fallout history buff.

Trivia
Exxon Valdez was the original name of an oil tanker owned by the former Exxon Corporation. It gained widespread infamy after the March 24, 1989 oil spill in which the tanker hit Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef and spilled an estimated 11 million gallons of crude oil.

The tanker was 300 m long, 50 m wide, and 27 m in depth (987 ft by 166 ft by 88 ft), weighing 30,000 tons empty and powered by a 31,650 shp (23.60 MW) diesel engine. The ship could transport a maximum of 1.48 million barrels (200,000 t) at a sustained speed of 16.25 knots (30 km/h) and was employed to transport crude oil from the Alaska consortium's pipeline terminal in Valdez, Alaska, to the lower 48 states of the United States.

In the last scenes of the movie Waterworld, when the protagonist sinks the tanker, just before it disappears, the stern of the ship reads 'Exxon Valdez'.

Appearances in games
The tanker appears only in Fallout 2.