ABSTRACT
The Department of the Interior is required to evaluate the risks of oil spills from outer continental shelf (OCS) oil leasing and must compare these risks to those of other oil sources, such as importing oil. Past practice has been to treat spill occurrence as a Poisson process, with a rate proportional to the amount of oil produced or transported. U.S. oil production and accident data and worldwide tanker data were used. Criticism of this approach has centered on the validity of using oil volume as an exposure variable, and the applicability of existing accident data to frontier OCS areas.
To examine these questions, the Interior Department recently sponsored several studies on OCS oil spill occurrence rates. One study compiled an extensive listing of all known oil spills of recent years and is believed to be the most complete database on oil spills available to the public. Another study looked at trends in oil spills from U.S. OCS platforms and discovered a statistically significant decrease in the spill rate since 1974. Other studies examined oil spill data for Cook Inlet and Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and found that spill rates for these areas could not be shown to be significantly different from the U.S. OCS platform spill rate based on trend analysis.
Studies are continuing to ensure that oil spill rates used by the Interior Department reflect the latest data and analyses.
Assessment of geomorphology and geologic hazards in the Parks Highway-Minto Flats-Dalton Highway infrastructure corridor: Cook Inlet to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska
