Global Quantity of Oil Spilled from Tankers (1970–2022)

The number of oil spills and the quantity of oil that is spilled from tankers — container ships transporting oil — has fallen substantially in recent decades.

On our new page, you can find all our data, visualizations, and writing related to oil spills from tankers, for which consistent, high-quality global data is available.

But not all oil spills come from tankers. They can also come from other sites, such as offshore oil rigs and damaged pipelines.