Estimating the consequence costs of oil spills from tankers

In the last decade, both worldwide and in the United States, the number of oil spills and the total quantity of oil spilled into the seas have declined. However, further improvements are still desirable. Clearly, the cost of oil spills to be avoided is one of the most important parameters in evaluating ship designs, measures, and policies to reduce oil pollution. The approach used in this -work is based on the assumption that the cleanup and the total cost of an oil spill can be approximated by the compensation eventually paid to claimants regarding the relative cost categories. To that extent, this paper reports on various analysis of oil spill cost data for spills. These analyses and their results can provide useful insights to the ongoing discussion on environmental risk evaluation criteria within Formal Safety Assessment (FSA). Additional uses are also suggested and some examples are given.