Estimating the Cost of Oil Spills: Lessons from the Amoco Cadiz Incident

This paper addresses some of the conceptual and empirical issues involved with estimating the economic costs of oil spills, using a comprehensive economic analysis of the 1978 supertanker Amoco Cadiz incident as a case study. Estimates are made of the market and nonmarket-valued costs of the spill and their distribution among the residents of the affected region, the nation, and the rest of the world. The implications of the case study for the analysis of future oil spill incidents are examined.