Oil Spill

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Archive for category: Oil Spill

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100 days after the MT Princess Empress sank in the Philippines, oil leaking from the tanker could still be seen from space

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In the early hours of February 28, the MT Princess Empress — an oil tanker following a common shipping route in the Philippines — encountered rough seas and strong winds while en route from Limay, Bataan to Iloilo City.

The ship started to take on water and suffered engine trouble as the waves tossed it around in the waters off Oriental Mindoro. After putting out a distress call, the captain and 19 crewmembers were rescued from the sinking tanker by a nearby cargo ship. The unmanned Princess Empress continued to drift toward Balingawan Point in Naujan, where it finally submerged about 14 km (9 mi) from shore.

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SkyTruth Spotlight

Satellite Imagery Reveals Clues to a Mysterious Persian Gulf Oil Slick

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SkyTruth intern Kennedy Lawson follows the trail of an offshore oil slick with no clear link to vessels or infrastructure.

As a newbie, at first the tech-heavy work intimidated me; it was difficult to imagine how I would fit in.
That fear was quickly replaced with excitement. On my first day, I met the team and developed a better understanding of exactly how I would contribute to environmental change.

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SkyTruth Intern Detects Oil Spills in Niger Delta and Rio Del Rey Basins

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Close inspection of satellite imagery reveals sources of oil pollution off Africa’s coast, near vulnerable communities

Nigeria is not only the largest economy in Africa, but also the largest exporter of crude oil on the continent, exporting 1.27 million barrels per day in 2021. The Nigerian economy is—and historically has been—reliant on the hydrocarbon industry for foreign exchange income and tax revenue. The reliance on crude oil in particular for income generation has led to the widespread proliferation of offshore drilling operations in the petroleum-rich Niger Delta Basin.

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Oil pollution in European waters: It’s worse than you think

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SkyTruth helped investigative journalists report on the extent of the offshore oil pollution problem in Europe.

For the past eight months, SkyTruth has been working with a team of journalists and media outlets associated with Lighthouse Reports investigating the problem of chronic (and often illegal) oil pollution by vessels at sea transiting European waters. These outlets recently released a groundbreaking series of stories. In this blog post we explain how SkyTruth developed the estimates used by these journalists to reveal the extent of oily bilge waste in European waters.

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Trinidad and Tobago’s Offshore Infrastructure Cumulative Spill Report 2020 – 2021

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SkyTruth’s project Cerulean helped intern Breanna Xiong document Trinidad and Tobago’s chronic oil pollution problem.

Trinidad and Tobago – the small dual-island Caribbean nation – has been a top exporter of liquefied natural gas for years. Because of its significant oil and gas exploration, and what some Trinidadians would call poor corporate and government responsibility, oil leakages from offshore infrastructure are very common events in Trinidad’s waters. With the help of satellite imagery, SkyTruth has been able to directly observe and continuously monitor Trinidad’s chronic oil pollution. 

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