Data & Statistics

We maintain a worldwide database of accidental oil spills from tankers, combined carriers and barges. This is used to generate statistics on numbers and sizes of spill, and to identify the causes of spills.

Long-term trends are analysed, which has proved useful for assessing the risk of oil spills for contingency planning, and for evaluating the possible consequences of changes in tanker design and operations.

Using our geographical information system, GIS, spills are displayed on maps and analysed alongside other datasets. For a number of high profile incidents, case histories and sources of further information are provided.

Please note: Although ITOPF attends both tanker and non-tanker incidents, for historical reasons our statistics data relates only to oil spills from tankers, combined carriers and barges (ie vessels designed, constructed or adapted for the carriage of crude oil or hydrocarbon products as cargo).

We do not publish statistics on oil spills from any other type of vessel, such as bulk carriers, container ships or general cargo ships, which have oil on board as bunker fuel (to power the vessel).