NASA captures photos of Libya’s burning oil tanks

[jakeXT]

Earlier this week, Islamic State militants launched an assault on oil storage tanks in El Sider and the Ras Lanuf oil port in Libya, killing as many as 10 guards and injuring 40, according to multiple news reports.

The militants set fire to five of the tanks, which Libyan officials said held between 420,000 and 460,000 barrels of oil each. As of Wednesday, guards at the facility were still trying to control the fires.

On Thursday, NASA released photos of the burning oil tanks captured by three different satellites, showing the extent of the smoke plumes. Click through above to see the NASA images.

From NASA’s Earth Observatory blog:

At 2:05 p.m. Libya time (12:05 Universal Time) on January 6, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an image (top) of smoke plumes rising from the fires and blowing to the east and northeast. By 11:35 a.m. local time (09:35 Universal Time) on January 7, the winds had shifted, driving the smoke southeast as shown in an image acquired by the MODIS instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite.

A multispectal imager on the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 2 got an even closer view of the fires. The images below were acquired at 11:39 a.m. Libya time (09:39 UTC) on January 5, 201

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/01/08/nasa-captures-photos-of-libyas-burning-oil-tanks/