America's 2018 Oil Spills

On average there were around 11 oils spills a month in the United States during 2018. The largest oil spill was in April in Superior, Wisconsin. 11 people were injured in the incident when a storage tank exploded.

You can view all the 137 oil spills that occurred in the United States during 2018 on Resource Watch's interactive map. The 2018 Oil Spills Map uses data from NOAA to plot the location of every one of the 137 oil spills reported in 2018. Louisiana was the state with the most oil spills last year. There were 52 spills in Louisiana (or close offshore) in 2018. Texas was the second highest with 13 spills and Alaska was third with 10 spills. The Resource Watch report into 2018's oil spills includes details on each of America's largest oil spills in 2018.


If you want to know where the US's oil wells are actually located then you can explore the Washington Post's United States of Oil and Gas map. The Washington Post map (shown above) shows oil wells in green and natural gas wells in pink.

In total there are more than 900,000 active oil and gas wells in the USA. The Washington Post article accompanying the map explores the boom in oil and gas production in the United States since 2010. The article includes a number of other maps and visualizations showing where this oil and gas boom has occurred.

The Resource Watch oil spill map shows a large cluster of spills in the Gulf of Mexico. The Washington Post reports that since 2003 "natural gas production in the gulf has declined more than 70 percent". Despite this decline the dangers of offshore drilling means the Gulf of Mexico is still a hot-spot on the oil spill map.