Clean Water

Water covers approximately 70% of the earth’s surface. Oceans, lakes, rivers, and groundwater are key natural resources and habitats. But the earth’s water is also an integral part of our maritime transportation system. Protecting these vital resources while producing, transporting, refining, and delivering the oil and natural gas products that you need each day is essential not only to you, but also to the industry that relies on it. 

Total petroleum industry spillage has decreased consistently over the last 40 years. Seventy-seven percent less oil is spilling since the 1970s and 46% less since the previous decade.

Average Annual Petroleum Industry Oil Spillage Graph

Source: Analysis of U.S. Oil Spillage

In fact, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, the amount of oil spilled into U.S. waters from tank ships has decreased significantly.

Source: U.S. Coast Guard

The data clearly indicates that safe oil development and transportation takes places every day for a nation that uses almost 19 million barrels of oil each day and 17.3 billion barrels in the last decade alone. This translates to more affordable energy that, in turn, fuels our nation’s critical energy needs for growth.

Unfortunately, the 2010 Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico represented a major discharge of oil into U.S. waters. It is estimated that 4.9 million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf. And while this was an isolated incident, the industry has decided to use the lessons learned from the incident to make significant improvements to its oil spill preparedness and response program wherever possible. Additionally, the industry has committed to working closely with the government and other non-government partners in completing this work.

The petroleum industry has introduced a number of innovations and improvements to reduce oil spills, mitigate the impacts of spills if they do occur, and reduce the overall environmental footprint of its operations. 

• Double hulled tankers have been developed to substantially reduce the risk of an oil leak in case of a grounding or collision. Oil tankers use high tech computer navigation systems linked to satellites to help to avoid marine hazards.
• Cathodic protection systems have been developed that help prevent corrosion of pipelines and storage facilities.
• Leak detection systems are used to monitor storage facilities.
• Electronic robots, called “smart pigs,” travel along pipelines looking for stress cracks and corrosion so that pipelines can be repaired before leaks occur.
• Gasoline stations use corrosion resistant underground storage tanks and monitoring systems to help prevent fuel leaks into the ground water. Automatic shutoff valves prevent these storage tanks from being overfilled.
• Casing made of high tech steel is used to isolate and protect groundwater from contamination during the drilling and production of oil and natural gas.
• Hydraulic fracturing is used in many areas to improve production. During this process, primarily water and sand are pumped into oil and natural gas formations to crack the rock, facilitating the flow of oil or natural gas to the surface. To assist in keeping the cracks within the producing formation, sensitive listening devices are used to monitor the cracking process. And the water used in the fracturing is increasingly reclaimed, cleaned and recycled.
• In some situations, water produced with oil and natural gas can be treated and used on site or for agricultural purposes, saving precious water that can be used for other purposes.
• Salt water is commonly co-produced with oil and natural gas. These brines, known as produced water, are now injected back into the brine bearing formations, preventing surface contamination. It can also result in more oil and natural gas being produced.
• Water use at refineries has been reduced by using cogeneration – a technique that generates electricity and steam for facility use, and allows the waste heat to be captured for use in refinery processes. This not only has cut energy use dramatically, but has also cut water use.
• New treatment techniques are used to clean refinery process waters so that they can be recycled and reused, saving billions of gallons of water while recovering valuable products such as sulfur and ammonia.
• At oil and natural gas facilities, water is rigorously tested and treated before it is released so that it does not adversely affect local surface or ground water resources.
• The development of low sulfur fuels has reduced the amount of sulfur in the air, dramatically reducing its impact on acid precipitation, which affects rivers and lakes.
• When spills occur, much of the oil is removed with technologies such as skimmers and sorbents. Dispersants can be added to facilitate the natural removal of oil by bacteria and chemical processes. Best practices for removing spilled oil are shared at forums such as the International Oil Spill Conference. The oil and natural gas industry developed the Environmental Research Forum to explore new and more effective ways to deal with spills. Spill response teams have been formed to quickly deal with spills should they occur.

What else is the industry doing to keep our waters clean?

• After the Macondo incident, a joint industry task force was established to review safety, preparedness, and response activities. The industry is committed to advancing the recommendations made by the task force, and will be working on the following initiatives over the next several years:
• recommended practices regarding best use of personal protective equipment for oil spill response workers;
• planning guidance to help companies improve their offshore oil spill response plans;
• improvements to the use of dispersants during oil spills, for example, the development of dispersant communications tools and assessments of research and development activities both for subsea and surface applications;
• assessments of shoreline protection and clean-up strategies and identification appropriate research and development efforts to improve them;
• evaluation of current and new technologies related to remote oil sensing and tracking;and
• improvements to current guidance and publications regarding the use of in situ burning as a technique to remove oil from the marine environment.

For more information on API’s Gulf of Mexico Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Safety program visit the
Gulf of Mexico Offshore Oil & Natural Gas Safety section.

For more information on oil spill data, visit the Coast Guard’s Homeport website at: 
https://homeport.uscg.mil (under Missions, visit Investigations, Marine Casualty/Pollution Investigations)