Assessing oil spill risk in the Chinese Bohai Sea: A case study for both ship and platform related oil spills

Abstract

Many oil spill accidents have occurred in the Chinese Bohai Sea recently because of extensive offshore oil exploitation and maritime transportation. In this study we made an attempt towards the development of a probabilistic model assessing the oil spill risks for the Bohai Sea. We utilized satellite images together with historic accident data from 1973 to 2002 and information from literature to establish probability of oil spills, which was then adjusted for the consequence of spill impacts. The assessment represented a distribution of oil spill risk in the study area. Totally, seven high risk zones have been identified, providing useful information on the optimal locations for oil spill recovery and cleanup equipment to improve spill-response readiness in the region. We anticipated that the results would contribute to the mitigation of the harmful effects of future oil spills in the Bohai Sea, if the presented model was used with care.