Data gap hides oil accident peril in the Americas

This briefing by Zero Carbon Analytics examines the systemic lack of transparency and consistency in reporting oil accidents across the Americas. It highlights that while the region contains three of the world's largest oil producers and consumers, most nations fail to provide open, updated datasets, hindering risk assessment for future drilling and environmental governance.

• There is a critical lack of transparency regarding oil accidents across the Americas; of the 35 countries in the region, only Brazil, Canada, and the United States regularly maintain open, updated datasets.
• Even in the three countries with the best available data, significant gaps persist. The only two data points consistently collected across the datasets of Brazil, Canada, and the United States are the number of accidents and the volume of oil spilled.
• Brazil possesses the most comprehensive oil incident dataset in the Americas, recording an average of 5.5 incidents per day. However, the data is marred by inconsistencies, such as missing incident dates in over 10% of cases and a lack of units of measurement for spilled volumes.
• Official records in Mexico may significantly underreport oil spills. An investigation into the Gulf of Mexico from January 2018 to July 2024 estimated that 60% of spills captured via satellite imagery were not reported by the responsible companies.
• The Amazon region is particularly vulnerable to oil accidents due to its biodiversity and the infrastructure required for the oil chain. In the Peruvian Amazon, 474 oil spills were recorded between 2000 and 2019, while Ecuador's Trans-Ecuadorian Pipeline System (SOTE) saw 65 incidents between 1972 and 2019, spilling roughly 730,000 barrels.
• Oil accidents in the Americas often have cross-border impacts, affecting shared ecosystems like the Caribbean Sea, the Amazon Basin, and the Gulf of Mexico. Interconnected infrastructure, such as the Keystone Pipeline (Canada to US) and the Trans-Andean Pipeline (Argentina to Chile), increases systemic vulnerabilities.

APA

Ribiero, R. (2025). Data gap hides oil accident peril in the Americas. Zero Carbon Analytics. https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/insights/briefings/data-gap-hides-oil-accident-peril-in-the-americas/

Chicago

Ribiero, Renata. Data gap hides oil accident peril in the Americas. Zero Carbon Analytics, 2025. https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/insights/briefings/data-gap-hides-oil-accident-peril-in-the-americas/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Ribiero |first1=Renata |title=Data gap hides oil accident peril in the Americas |publisher=Zero Carbon Analytics |date=14 November 2025 |url=https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/insights/briefings/data-gap-hides-oil-accident-peril-in-the-americas/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ribiero2025data, author = {Ribiero, Renata}, title = {{Data gap hides oil accident peril in the Americas}}, institution = {Zero Carbon Analytics}, year = {2025}, month = nov, url = {https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/insights/briefings/data-gap-hides-oil-accident-peril-in-the-americas/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }