Natural Resource Damages from Oil Spills in the United States

Large oil spills in the United States often result in some natural resource damages (NRD), which arise from injuries to natural resources and losses of their services. We use multiple regression analysis to identify the factors that explain variations in NRD settlements, including: spill amount, whether threatened and endangered species were injured, whether recreation closures occurred, some temporal factors, some geographic factors, and some characteristics of the government agencies pursuing NRD. Then, we use our preferred statistical model to predict the median and confidence interval for the NRD settlement for future oil spills with specified characteristics. Such predictions for future spills will be helpful in determining the appropriate scale for the NRD assessment and for setting aside reserves for settlement.