Who is the Gulf Monitoring Consortium?

Who is the Gulf Monitoring Consortium?

June 20, 2012
The Gulf Monitoring Consortium (GMC) is a rapid response alliance that collects, analyzes and publishes images and other information acquired from space, from the air, and from the surface in order to investigate and expose pollution incidents that occur in the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf Coast region. Our members engage in systematic monitoring of oil pollution in the Gulf of Mexico using satellite images and mapping, aerial reconnaissance and photography, and on-the-ground and in-the-water observation and sampling to identify, locate…

Will Taylor Energy Response Offer Any New Answers?

January 20, 2016
On Jan. 20, Taylor Energy will host a public forum in Baton Rouge, La., to explain what efforts they have taken to respond to the ongoing oil spill in Mississippi Canyon Block 20 (MC-20) – the former site of Taylor Energy Platform #23051. Over eleven years ago Hurricane Ivan triggered a subsea landslide which destroyed the platform and buried 28 wells under a hundred or more feet of mud and sediment. The spill…

[Waterkeeper Alliance] Veil of Secrecy Finally Lifted on Taylor Energy’s Decade Long Oil Leak

October 2, 2015
On September 3, 2015, Waterkeeper Alliance, Apalachicola Riverkeeper, and Louisiana Environmental Action Network, represented by the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic and the National Environmental Law Center, signed a settlement agreement with Taylor Energy. The environmental groups initiated the lawsuit three years ago in response to the lack of transparency surrounding the spill and Taylor Energy’s response efforts. This agreement signals the end of this veil of secrecy. This settlement will make it easier…
Five Years Since BP: Gulf Watchdogs Reflect on the Other Gulf Oil Spill

Five Years Since BP: Gulf Watchdogs Reflect on the Other Gulf Oil Spill

April 22, 2015
April 22, 2015 – Five years ago today the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig sank into the Gulf of Mexico after an explosion claimed 11 lives and touched off a disaster that still poisons the Gulf Coast. While the 2010 BP disaster undeniably devastated Gulf communities and ecosystems, few people realize that chronic oil and gas pollution from other sources is impacting the Gulf Coast on an almost daily basis. Since July 15,…

[SouthWings] Best Practices in Aerial Observation of Oil Spills in Open Water

April 7, 2015
In the five years since BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank in April of 2010 -- killing 11 people and leading to an uncontrolled 87-day oil gusher that covered vast areas of the Gulf of Mexico in oil -- SouthWings and our partners in the Gulf Monitoring Consortium have learned much about effective citizen reporting of pollution, especially related to oil spills in water. Thanks to the work of SkyTruth, we have also…

[GRN] Op-Ed: Warnings from the Gulf

March 30, 2015
Op-Ed published on March 28, 2015 in The Virginian-Pilot by Cynthia Sarthou, Exec. Director at Gulf Restoration Network When the Obama administration announced it would open the Atlantic Coast to offshore oil drilling in January, references to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill began almost immediately. While Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell asserted the government had "learned from the challenges" of the 2010 disaster, those alarmed by the decision to open the Atlantic reminded…

[SkyTruth] Playing Hide-and-Seek! With an Oil Tanker…

September 5, 2014
Sept. 3, 2014 by John Amos, SkyTruth - Playing Hide-and-Seek! With an Oil Tanker... Supertankers loaded with crude have been making the news recently, mostly because they can't find a place to sell the stuff. These tankers departed from Kurdistan, but Iraq claims the oil they carry is their property and the Kurds don't have the right to sell it.  This global political dispute is playing out on the water in an interesting,…

[The Lens/ProPublica] Losing Ground – Louisiana’s Vanishing Coasts

September 4, 2014
By Bob Marshall, Al Shaw, Brian Jacobs, et al. Originally published on ProPublica - http://projects.propublica.org/louisiana/ Louisiana is drowning, quickly. In just 80 years, some 2,000 square miles of its coastal landscape have turned to open water, wiping places off maps, bringing the Gulf of Mexico to the back door of New Orleans and posing a lethal threat to an energy and shipping corridor vital to the nation’s economy. And it’s going to get worse, even…

[LABB] Marathon Refinery at Garyville, La. Hit by Tornado

June 5, 2014
By Anna Hrybyk, Program Manager at Louisiana Bucket Brigade. Posted June 4, 2014 An EF-1 tornado, about 150 yards wide with maximum winds estimated near 105 mph, hit Garyville about 5:30 a.m [on Wednesday, May 28, 2014], the National Weather Service said.  The tornado damaged the cooling towers at the Marathon Refinery in Garyville that led to the complete shutdown of the crude unit. Image - iWitness Pollution Map Report submitted on May 28th…

[Salon] The Truth Behind the Spin: What BP doesn’t want you to know about the Gulf Oil Spill

May 5, 2014

By Lindsay Abrams; Original Post at Salon

Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon, off Louisiana, April 21, 2010. (Credit: Reuters)

The energy company insists the Gulf has recovered. The people who live there say it still has a long way to go.

The best time to find tarballs on Louisiana’s shorelines is directly after a thunderstorm, when the waves churn up the oil carpeting the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and deposit its weathered remnants onto the beach.

That’s according to Jonathan Henderson, and he should know – he’s been tracking tar for four years now, ever since the day, back in April 2010, when he took his first flight over the Gulf of Mexico to survey the plume of oil shooting out from BP’s Macondo Prospect. He’s taken some 200 trips since. These days, he tends to travel to Grand Isle State Park and Elmer’s Island. The oil no longer covers those places, as it once did, but despite what you may have heard about the cleanup being complete, fresh tarballs keep reappearing. Especially after storms, Henderson’s liable to find them by the thousands.

Aerial Photos Document Wetland Damage from Oil and Gas Activity

April 8, 2014
Taken on a SouthWings flight over the Mississippi River Delta with Gulf Restoration Network, these photos by Jonathan Henderson link visible wetlands damage to specific permits that oil and gas companies obtained for drilling at these sites in coastal Louisiana. Annotated aerial photo set available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/healthygulf/sets/72157643594038754/ The straight lines in this photo (right) are examples of the canals that oil and gas companies dredge through wetlands to access well sites. These artificial…