Incidents Associated with Oil and Gas Operations: Outer Continental Shelf 2000

The OCS events summarized in this report are based solely on those that were reported to MMS and input into the TIMS database during calendar year 2000. For statistical purposes, we make a distinction between the terms events and incidents. We use event when referring to a reported happening. A happening sometimes involves more than one incident (i.e., a fire can involve several incidents, for example, an injury, a fatality, or an explosion, or more). We use incident when referring to category of accident that occurred during an event. A total of 298 events were reported to MMS during 2000 (256 in the Gulf of Mexico Region and 42 in the Pacific Region). However, not all of the 298 events are summarized in this document; we excluded two events because one was not work-related and the other one came under USCG jurisdiction. Also, we excluded 71 pollution events because they involved spills of less than 50 barrels.