Small Slick Visible At Site of Chevron’s Blowout and Fire off Nigeria
Teri noticed a small slick on today’s Envisat ASAR radar satellite image covering the site of Chevron’s blowout and fire off the coast of Nigeria. We measure it at about 18.6 kilometers long, extending about 39 square kilometers. It appears to be very thin. Assuming the slick is, on average, one micron thick, that amounts to about 9,500 gallons of some oily substance — possibly unburned natural gas condensate, since this was reported by Chevron to be a gas exploration well that was not creating any oil slick:
This MODIS image taken on February 3 (and this one from February 5) shows the ongoing fire where the KS Endeavor drill rig used to be, before it toppled over and sank: