Quantitative oil spill risk from offshore fields in the Bohai Sea, China

Abstract

The oil spill risk in the environments surrounding the Bohai Sea is aggravated by increasing marine petroleum exploitation. There is a growing need to assess the risk of oil pollution in sensitive marine areas and coastlines. Both the recurrence frequency of spill accidents and the duration of exposure in marine areas and coastal shorelines are considered in our statistical model, which consists of a probabilistic oil spill model used to simulate various oil spill scenarios at twenty oil fields in the Bohai Sea based on high-resolution oceanographic, meteorological, and geomorphological data. The statistical results of the risk to marine areas integrate the probability of pollution in marine areas, oil slick thickness, and duration of water surface covered by a floating slick. The coastal risk index includes the probability of a shoreline hit, average mass of stranding oil, and time of oil beaching. The spatial distributions of environmental triggering factors and coastal/marine vulnerability are merged, and a map of the oil spill risk in the Bohai Sea is presented, which is useful for contingency planning and the assessment of environmental risk of marine petroleum exploitation.