The 22nd edition of Marsh's The 100 Largest Losses 1972 – 2011 reviews the 100 largest property damage losses that have occurred in the hydrocarbon processing industries since 1972.

This review is based on the Marsh Energy Loss Database with information gathered in the course of our interactions with the industry as well as from the public domain. The Marsh Energy Loss Database contains over 8,000 records for the period through to 2011. Despite access to all of this information, there are still some losses for which we do not have even a basic understanding of what went wrong.

Six new losses, large enough to feature in this publication, have been identified since 100 Largest Losses was last published in 2010. Of these six, five have occurred in the Upstream category. These losses are consistent with trends in industry for developing untapped and technologically challenging sources of hydrocarbons. The sixth loss occurred in a facility falling into the Refineries category. This loss occurred on an oil sands upgrader, a site employing contemporary methods for oil recovery from a previously marginal source.

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NATURAL CATASTROPHE ACCUMULATION
Natural catastrophe incidents have the potential to cause very large aggregate losses. The incidents identified in this document are generally loss events affecting a single facility, and as such this analysis does not identify the aggregated losses from natural catastrophes such as hurricanes or earthquakes. A supplementary section addressing natural catastrophe accumulation has been included for the first time in this edition of the 100 Largest Losses. The losses discussed do not technically fall within the 100 Largest Losses, however we feel they are significant enough to warrant comment.