Monitoring oil reserves with satellite imagery
by Timothy Whitehead on Jun.03, 2016, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
When we were having a look around Rio de Janeiro for yesterday’s post we noticed a large oil refinery (Refinaria de Duque de Caxias) with many oil tanks, and it reminded us that monitoring oil reserves in large oil tanks is one of the possible commercial uses for high frequency satellite imagery produced by companies like Planet Labs and Terra Bella. Many of the large tanks used for storing oil have a floating roof, and the amount of oil stored in the tank can be determined by the height of the tank roof. For more technical details see this interesting article.
Full tanks on left. The same tanks but not so full on the right. Imagery from Google Earth, copyright DigitalGlobe.
We also created the animation below showing the tank levels changing over time. Google Earth historical imagery does not line up perfectly because the images are taken from different angles. We have tried to line up the ground in the different frames.
You can adjust the speed of the animation by dragging the slider.
The tank in the centre, second row from the bottom has its roof renovated during the animation.
Find the refinery in Google Earth with this KML file
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