Satellite Pictures News

An oil spill that has stained Tobago's coastline in the Caribbean is entering into Grenada's waters and could impact neighboring Venezuela, Tobago's Chief Secretary Farley Augustine told Reuters on Thursday.Eight days after Trinidad and Tobago's Coast Guard first spotted the oil from a capsized vessel whose owner and origin have not been confirmed, portions of the stain have moved about 144 km (89 miles) into the Caribbean Sea at a rate of 14 km per hour, Augustine said."It has now entered Grenada's territorial waters…

When the supertanker Young Yong sailed to the Chinese port of Qingdao in September last year, it had quality certificates for its cargo stating it was transporting Malaysian crude oil, according to the documents reviewed by Reuters.But satellite images and photos show the Chinese-owned ship had loaded the oil four months earlier in Venezuela, an OPEC nation in South America under U.S. oil sanctions.The Young Yong is one of three vessels identified by Reuters that were chartered by little-known companies to export Venezuelan oil and used false documents to conceal its origin, according to shipping documents and 11 sources with knowledge of the trade.Two of those tankers, including the Young Yong, were designated this month by U.S.

A tanker carrying about 1 million barrels on Iranian heavy crude arrived in recent days in Venezuelan waters for delivery to the country's largest refinery, according to a shipping report seen by Reuters on Monday and vessel tracking data.Iran and Venezuela have recently expanded a swap agreement signed last year, adding the supply of Iranian heavy crude to Venezuela's El Palito refinery and Paraguana Refining Center (CRP), part of an effort to revamp the dilapidated facilities.

Three Cuban-flagged tankers that are under U.S. sanctions for transporting Venezuelan oil to the Communist-run island have been serviced in the port of Veracruz on Mexico's Gulf coast, according to vessel tracking data and industry sources.The maintenance work on the vessels—one of which was serviced as recently as this month—is a potential breach of sanctions on Venezuela, two lawyers who specialize in U.S. sanctions said.However, the United States has in the past not brought enforcement actions against shipyards for doing work on blacklisted vessels from those countries, according to U.S. Treasury Department data.Under U.S. law, companies and individuals are prohibited from materially assisting sanctioned entities.

The massive dredging project, which is under-way on the bottom of the Gulf of Finland in Russia, reportedly a threat to the environment. But federal environmental protection agency of Russia, Rosprirodnadzor, has affirmed that it does not have a trans-boundary impact on water quality. Local media reported that the amount of dredging required for the Port of Bronka, a deepwater port under construction south of Kronstadt, is so high that the cloudiness of the water is discernible from space, with recent satellite pictures showing that the cloudy water has dispersed dozens of kilometres west on the Gulf of Finland. Dredging increases the cloudiness of water and can result in the release of nutrients from the seabed into the sea currents.

Vietnam has carried out significant land reclamation at two sites in disputed South China Sea waters, recent satellite pictures show, but analysts say the scale of the work is dwarfed by that of China, reports AFP. The expansion of the land area of Vietnamese-controlled Sand Cay and West London Reef in the Spratly is shown in satellite images from Washington's Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Vietnam has carried out significant land reclamation at two sites in the disputed South China Sea, though the scale and pace is dwarfed by that of China, says CSIS. Beijing has called on Vietnam to stop its reclamation work at two sites in the disputed marine areas in the South China Sea, parts of which Manila calls the West Philippine Sea.

OCENS announces version 3 of its award-winning WeatherNet Weather-on-Demand service. The manufacturers explain that WeatherNet 3 transforms the product selection process by asking users for their general weather interests and then responding with definitive file suggestions for the given area of operation. No need to get specific, just let WeatherNet know whether you’d like GRIB or classic weather charts, text files or buoy products, fishing data or ice forecasts, satellite pictures or tide information etc. WeatherNet’s intelligent content algorithm then merges users general interests with their present or proposed location, anywhere in the world, and the work by OCENS professionals who have mapped each one of the thousands of products in its library.