Our World
in Data
Data

Global quantity of oil spilled from tankers

See all data and research on:
Oil Spills

About this data

Global quantity of oil spilled from tankers
Total quantity of oil spilled.
Source
ITOPF (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 16, 2024
Next expected update
October 2025
Date range
1970–2023
Unit
tonnes

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

ITOPF maintains a database of oil spills from tank vessels, including combined carriers, FPSOs and barges. This contains information on accidental spillages of persistent and non-persistent hydrocarbon oil since 1970, except those resulting from acts of war. For historical reasons, spills are generally categorised by size, <7 tonnes, 7-700 tonnes and >700 tonnes, although the actual amount spilt is also recorded. Information is now held on over 10,000 incidents, the vast majority of which fall into the smallest category i.e. <7 tonnes. Information is gathered from published sources, such as the shipping press and other specialist publications, as well as from vessel owners, their insurers and from ITOPF's own experience at incidents. Historically, information from published sources mostly related to large spills, often resulting from collisions, groundings, structural damage, fires or explosions. In recent decades, however, reporting of smaller spills has improved.

Retrieved on
October 16, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.itopf.org/knowledge-resources/data-statistics/statistics/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
ITOPF (2023). Oil tanker spill statistics 2022. ITOPF Ltd,  London, UK

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Global quantity of oil spilled from tankers”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska and Max Roser (2022) - “Oil Spills”. Data adapted from ITOPF. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/quantity-oil-spills [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

ITOPF (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

ITOPF (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Global quantity of oil spilled from tankers” [dataset]. ITOPF, “Oil tanker spill statistics” [original data]. Retrieved January 15, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/quantity-oil-spills