We’re number one!

The United States leads the list of the 10 countries with the most oil spills from 1903 to 2023, according to the results of a new study compiled in the U.K.

The U.S., the biggest oil producer in the world, has clocked up 108 oil spills during that time and loses more than 108 tonnes on average per incident. The U.S. also accounts for around 42% of the world total.  

As part of their Oil Spills Index – the experts at Utility Bidder said they profiled the countries with the most oil spills between 1903 and 2023, as well as taking into account the countries with the largest amount of oil lost per spill and the change in global oil spill numbers over the past 50 years.

You can review the research here – https://www.utilitybidder.co.uk/compare-business-energy/oil-spills-index/

Here are the countries with the most oil spills between 1903-2023:

The research and further findings also revealed:

• “Iraq loses more oil per spill than any other country – totalling 545,000 tonnes per spill. This resulted from a deliberate leak by Iraqi forces into the Persian Gulf in the 1990s.
• Countries such as Yemen, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, South Korea, Solomon Islands, Singapore, Portugal and Peru have the fewest spills in the world, responsible for only 1 spill in the last century.
• There has been an 88.14% decrease in the number of global oil spills over the last 50 years. There were just 7 spills from tankers in 2022 as compared with 59 in 1973.”

Although this study has some interesting data, there are a couple of things I have questions about in the study.

First, the study used Wikipedia to find the number of oil spills in each country between 1903-2023. As people know, Wikipedia is not always accurate.

Secondly, they removed Russia and Ukraine from their ranking without explaining why.

As the study points out, the U.S. is indeed the world’s largest oil producer right now, as well as the largest consumer of oil. The Biden Administration recently canceled oil and gas land leases in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, but U..S oil production continues to soar to record levels.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that  U.S. crude oil production will surpass 12.9 million barrels per day in late 2023 and will exceed 13 million barrels per day in early 2024, both annual records.

In its September Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA forecasts U.S. crude oil production to average 12.8 million barrels per day in 2023 – 200,000 barrels per day more than in its July forecast.

“We forecast continued growth in domestic oil production, which is bolstered by higher oil prices and higher well productivity in the near term,” said EIA Administrator Joe DeCarolis.

The EIA forecasts that global liquid fuels production will increase by 1.2 million barrels per day in 2023 despite recent voluntary decreases in production from OPEC+. Global production in their forecast increases by 1.7 million b/d in 2024.

“Non-OPEC production is the main driver of global production growth in our forecast, increasing by 2.0 million b/d in 2023 and 1.3 million b/d in 2024, led by the United States, Brazil, Canada, and Guyana,” the agency stated.