A beach in eastern Thailand has been declared a disaster area as oil leaking from an underwater pipeline in the Gulf of Thailand continues to wash ashore and blacken the sand.
The leak, from a pipeline owned by Star Petroleum Refining, started late on Tuesday and was brought under control a day later after spilling an estimated 50,000 litres (11,000 gallons) of oil into the ocean about 12 miles (20km) from the country’s industrialised eastern seaboard.
The government of Peru says an off-shore oil spill is twice as big as previously reported. It's now confirmed that 12,000 barrels of oil leaked into the sea two weeks ago at a refinery owned by the Spanish oil company Repsol. Peru's government has demanded compensation but Repsol says it was an act of nature.
Exactly five years ago this month, an oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico leaking an estimated 134 million gallons of crude oil and four million pounds of natural gas into surrounding marine habitat. The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster as it was later known, was the largest oil spill of its kind, killing and injuring countless marine animals, shorebirds, sea turtles and other wildlife.
At the time of the oil spill, locals accused BP of 'information blackout' and were concerned that they were not able to document the true impact of the incident on their environment.
"People would come across residues on the beach or dead fish and animals," explains Jeff Warren who witnessed the aftermath of the oil spill. "So we were literally googling 'how do you identify (polluting) oil'," he adds.
In response, a small group of mapping enthusiasts got together and started using low-cost balloon and kites to take aerial images of the spill and also to test samples using DIY spectrometers. And so Public Lab was born.
