Putting Response and Natural Resource Damage Costs in Perspective1

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Abstract
The total private and social cost of oil spills is of great interest to industry, responders, and regulators, but relatively few incidents have been examined in detail. Furthermore, publicly available cost data are often limited to state and federal response costs and natural resource damage settlements. Significant categories of costs, such as private response costs, third-party claims, and vessel or facility repair costs, are often not publicly available. Failure to consider these additional cost categories may result in erroneous conclusions regarding the total cost of spills and the relative significance of any one cost category. In this paper the authors update their previous analysis (Helton et al., 1997) on the various categories of costs that may result from spill incidents. The authors present and discuss the costs for a number of incidents representing a range of spill volumes and locations. The authors' data show that, contrary to the perception, costs for natural resource damages and assessment comprise only a small portion of total liability from an oil spill.

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