Flaring

NASA Earth Observatory image modified by SkyTruth

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See It, Change It

That’s not Atlantis, it’s just a bunch of human-made structures at sea

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SkyTruth’s offshore infrastructure dataset can help identify areas at high risk of oil pollution events.

Although anyone can go to Google Maps and find most buildings in the world, we can’t do the same for infrastructure at sea. SkyTruth and our partners at Global Fishing Watch were inspired by this problem and created a dataset that allows us to locate offshore infrastructure. By applying three criteria, intern Breanna Xiong identified structures that have a high, medium, or low likelihood of being related to oil and gas production. This can make monitoring for oil pollution and identifying sources more efficient, and support SkyTruth’s project Cerulean.

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Tech Tools

Monthly Methane Flaring Summary Data Now Available in Alerts

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New SkyTruth Alerts layer helps pollution trackers quantify flaring trends.

Those tracking methane flaring will want to try the newest layer in SkyTruth Alerts: a summary of monthly flaring activity that can be based on your current map view or selected Areas of Interest. Learn how in this post.

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See It, Change It

The trouble with methane

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Methane leaks from oil and gas operations are a big problem for climate. Solutions are coming.

Over the 162 years since the world’s first commercial oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania, a vast network of oil and gas wells, pipelines, pumping stations, storage tanks, refineries, and distribution lines has been built. And this network — including the modern pieces — is riddled with leaks. That’s a big problem, because methane in the air absorbs heat from the sun, warming up our atmosphere.

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People & Places

Correcting Recent Reporting on Offshore Flaring in Guyana

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Recent reporting misrepresented SkyTruth data.

We’re always glad to have conservation-minded groups and individuals use our flaring maps, but we would like to correct some errors in how our data was interpreted in two recent articles in the Stabroek News concerning natural gas flaring from an ExxonMobil-owned vessel, the Liza Destiny, anchored off the coast of Guyana. 

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See It, Change It

Fracking in Suburbia

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What do you do when big oil moves in next door?

Three women shared their stories with a group of journalists and others attending the Society of Environmental Journalists 2019 meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado last month. Fort Collins sits right next to Weld County – the most prolific county in Colorado for oil and gas production and among the most prolific in the entire United States. There, hydraulic fracturing (mostly for oil) has boomed, along with a population surge that is gobbling up farmland and converting open space into subdivisions. Often, these two very different types of development occur side-by-side.

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