The relationship between OCS oil and gas activities and oil spills is a common question heard by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and public concern about oil spills is heightened due to the potential impacts on sensitive resources. BOEM’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysts use information about the general effects of oil spills, spill volume, spill type, duration, and location to estimate the impacts to resources. However, many of the most well studied oil spills (e.g., Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon) are orders of magnitude larger than the median OCS spill sizes used for NEPA impact assessment. BOEM’s NEPA analysts scale the impacts from these spills to spills of much smaller volumes and duration. Much of the information regarding smaller spills of 500–20,000 barrels is spread throughout the gray literature or conference proceedings and not easily accessible to BOEM’s NEPA analysts. This effort was conducted to synthesize available oil spill research (1964–2020) for a range of spill sizes and three oil types to enable BOEM to better meet their responsibilities of managing offshore energy while considering the potential impacts in an efficient and holistic manner.

USD: $199,915

2019-10-03 → 2021-09-01