The spill from the Montara platform blowout continues unabated since August 21, now in its 33rd day. Using the oil company’s unsubstantiated estimate of 400 barrels (=16,800 gallons) per day, that means at least half a million gallons have been spilled, Australia’s worst offshore oil production spill since drilling began there 40 years ago. Critics […]
MODIS Terra and Aqua images from September 17 have a nearly ideal sunglint pattern to reveal the oil slicks and sheen resulting from the ongoing blowout and spill from the Montara platform in the Timor Sea off Western Australia. The well has been uncontrolled now for 4 weeks. Patchy, discontinuous slicks and sheen, separated by […]
SkyTruth just got new aerial photos of the Montara platform, taken on an overflight by Environs Kimberley on September 12. The platform is still spewing crude oil into the Timor Sea and a potentially explosive fog of natural gas and gas condensate into the air. The West Triton rig is visible in one of the […]
Folks are asking us “How much oil is being spilled into the Timor Sea?” We can’t answer that with the MODIS satellite images we’ve been getting from NASA; they just don’t contain enough information to estimate how thick the oil slicks are, so we can’t come up with a quantity. All we can do is […]
It’s been 20 days now since a well blew out on the Montara oil platform in the Timor Sea; the platform was immediately evacuated and the uncontrolled well has been continuously spewing oil into the ocean ever since. MODIS images taken about three hours apart on September 10 show an area of patchy slicks and […]