Integral Solution for Oil Spill Detection using SAR Data

Oil spill detection on sea surface is a very difficult and actual task. Oil and oil products spills may occur at any stage of the offshore oil production and transportation cycle. Therefore taking into account the current trends of oil production, system developing for shelf and tank fleet monitoring becomes very crucial today. The ScanEx R&D Center has developed an integral solution for the SAR data fast acquisition, processing and oil spill monitoring. This technology has combined the UniScan multimission station, the ScanEx SAR Processor and ScanEx Image Processor software. The UniScan station is capable to receive data from the 12 operating Earth observation satellites including the Radarsat-1 and Envisat-1. The SAR images were processed using the ScanEx SAR Processor software. The new version of the ScanEx Image Processor supports automatic and manual oil spill detection. The ScanEx SAR integral technology was successfully tested to detect oil spills in the Caspian Sea in May 2006 and in September 2007. The technology meets the customer´s requirements for fast data processing.