Oil-Spill Risk Analysis: Contingency Planning Statistics for Gulf of Mexico OCS Activities

摘要

The Federal Government offers U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lands in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) for oil and gas leasing. Because oil spills may occur from activities associated with offshore oil exploration, production, and transportation resulting from these lease sales, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) has conducted a formal oil-spill risk analysis (OSRA) to provide spill statistics that can be used in contingency planning for these areas. This report summarizes the results of that analysis, the objective of which was to estimate the risk of oil-spill contact to coastal resources in the GOM from oil spills accidentally occurring from the OCS activities. The occurrence of oil spills is fundamentally a matter of probability. There is no certainty regarding the amount of oil that would be produced, or the size or likelihood of a spill that would occur, during the estimated life of a given lease sale. Neither can the winds and ocean currents that transport oil spills be known for certain. A probabilistic event such as an oil-spill occurrence or oil-spill contact to an environmentally sensitive area cannot be predicted, only an estimate of its likelihood (its probability) can be quantified. This report provides the contingency planning statistics for the OCS activities in the GOM. The probabilities of oil spill occurrence and the combined probabilities of contact in the GOM are already presented in previous reports.