Satellites Put Annual Ocean Oil Slicks at About 610,000 Square Miles
SkyTruth says ships and offshore oil equipment account for most of the pollution, with more than 90% of estimated slicks inside national waters.
7 Articles
7 Articles
Satellites Put Annual Ocean Oil Slicks at About 610,000 Square Miles
Conservation group SkyTruth estimates oil slicks cover about 610,000 square miles of ocean each year, an area far larger than the tanker disasters that usually make the news. The Sept. 23 analysis draws on the group’s Cerulean platform and Sentinel-1 radar images from 2023 through 2025. It maps chronic slicks tied to ships and offshore oil equipment, not only rare blowouts. The raw figure is 1.58 million square kilometers, or roughly 610,000 squ…
More than 90 percent of the estimated pollution occurs in the territorial waters of states.
In addition to the pollution that we can witness daily, even simply by leaning out our window, there is another visually less striking but equally worrying one: oil. In this case, however, we do not talk about its use and the consequences, but about its spread on the surface of the sea. Without taking into account the most impacting media events, [...] The article Oil stains the oceans and the causes are many: it is visible only on the surface, …
An estimated 1.58 million square kilometers of oil spills occur in the world's oceans each year, according to a new satellite analysis by SkyTruth. More than 90 percent of the estimated pollution is within national waters, often near coastlines and in protected areas.
Each year, oil slicks cover an estimated 1.58 million square kilometres of ocean surface. This is the result of a new study by the satellite tracking organization SkyTruth, which crossed images captured between 2023 and 2025 with its Cerulean monitoring system. 22,775 slicks were detected over the period. The organization attributes 81% of the polluted surface to ships, compared with 18% to offshore infrastructures. The study points to several a…
Coverage Details
Bias Distribution
- 100% of the sources are Center
Factuality
To view factuality data please Upgrade to Premium
