You Can See These Oil Disasters from Space

When a train carrying 72 tanker cars rull of oil derailed and slammed into a queit Quebec town, the fiery nightmare that ensued was visible from space. NASA's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite flew over Lac-Megantic at around 3 AM, and the agency released the photos it snapped shortly after.

When compared with images taken the day before, the shots give us a better idea of the scale of the tragedy, which has claimed over a dozen lives so far, and a new perspective on the risk of moving oil by rail.

The Lac-Megantic catastrophe is far from the first oil disaster we've observed from space. Satellite imagery definitely adds an additional 'oh shit' factor: it's often a story itself that you can see an oil spill or drilling activity from outer space.

That seems to be the reason that satellite imagery of the North Dakota Bakken gas and oil fields went viral. NPR's Robert Krulwich pointed out that the cluster of methane flares produced by the new drilling frenzy there had made the once-remote wilderness as visible as a small city from orbit.

Which is great—more people are paying attention to Midwestern energy politics thanks to NASA. But as access to satellite imagery has improved, and disseminating the stills grew easier and cheaper, satellites have played an increasingly crucial role in actually keeping the public adequately informed about disaster events. Satellites are doing important eco-journalism.

During the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the public was kept largely in the dark about the disaster's actual size. The US Coast guard could hazard a guess by doing flyovers, and BP could push its own heavily biased estimates, but no one really knew what to believe. Until a nonprofit group called Skytruth began analyzing satellite imagery of the spill, that is.

"The Coast Guard was stuck repeating BP's number," Paul Wood, Skytruth's chief technology officer, told me in an interview. That number, of course, would turn out to be embarrassingly low. Satellite imagery "provides a kind of accountability," he said. "With our experience with the BP spill, we were able to project an independent flow rate" that was much more accurate.

Skytruth's estimates quickly earned headlines, and probably played a significant role in federal agencies and oil spill responders revising their figures. Skytruth has since turned its analysis towards smaller, longer-running spills in the gulf, as well as disasters in oil-rich, accident-prone, and poorly regulated Nigeria.

All of the above are important illustrations of how satellite imagery has become an integral reporting tool  energy disasters. They're a public service. A fine example is one of the largest officially sanctioned energy disasters-in-progress—the tar sands project in Alberta, Canada.

It's been called the "most destructive project on Earth," and not just because the exceptionally carbon-intensive oil that's harvested there is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. It's also devouring once-pristine old-growth Boreal forest. And, yes, the destruction is visible from space.

In fact, it's so visible that anyone can see it, right now, using Google Satellite. Just input 'fort mcmurray alberta canada' into the search field and scroll around. You'll get images like this one:

Yes, that used to be a forest. Or try this classic, from 2005:

"The satellites give you a very nice, objective view of things," Woods said. "On private land, where you can't go in and see for yourself, it gives us a chance to look."

That's exactly what's happening in all of the above examples—we're becoming increasingly conversant with a relatively new gold mine of information. Thankfully so, as that there are more disasters and destructive energy projects than ever to keep track of. Satellite-based journalism has already proven it can move the needle.

"It gives you a mechanism a lever for forcing accountability, and often, getting regulators up from the cozy position from working with the industry," Woods said. "As long as oil doesn't wash up on the shore, they don't feel like they have to do anything." Satellite images can prod them into action, he says.

And surely, it's a good way to get the public, which might otherwise shrug at now-banal topics offshore oil spills or energy production in the Midwest, to pay attention. Just as more journalists are turning to drones, expect the focus on harvesting data from satellites to continue to grow.