Brilliant Repost From Skittish Originally22 Feb 2024 06:55
Due to recent problems with cloud cover Sentinel 2 imagery has been disappointing for a couple of months now.
However yesterday the Sun shone bright, and for the first time in many months Rukwa was (almost) cloud free.
This is what Sentinel revealed -
https://www.flickr.com/photos/194934344@N06/53541796950/in/dateposted-public/
To the uninitiated it just looks like a mass of browns and greens, however a bit of annotation reveals the sites of Tai-3 and Itumbula W and SE.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/194934344@N06/53540491272/in/dateposted-public/
The site of Tai-1 is just next to the green blob SE of Tai-3. The river in flood to the north is the Momba River.
Unfortunately one of the few places covered by cloud was Camp Rukwa (the original FOB) so we cannot see if there is any activity there, I suspect not, but cannot be sure.
Next is a closeup of Tai-3 -
https://www.flickr.com/photos/194934344@N06/53541371056/in/dateposted-public/
the left image is the last clear day 17-12-2023 and right, yesterday 20-2-2024. Little change there, and that black blob is probably just a stack of pipes. no activity at all over the last couple of months and all the equipment has been removed and parts of the pad are now overgrown with vegetation. It is affectively "abandoned", but not necessarily in a technical sense - when Tai-1 was abandoned it was totally erased within around a month of drilling ceasing, at Tai-3 we see the pad and roadway to it still in existence, ready for a revisit, with a bit of work, although I suspect no time soon.
Now the juicy stuff - Itumbula W and SE.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/194934344@N06/53540757182/in/dateposted-public/
The top image is yesterday, the bottom image 17-12-2024, again the previously last clear image.
Well not too much has changed over the last couple of months. These images are obviously pretty grainy, Sentinel is a land use tool, not really designed for detailed reconnaissance, but i will try to get more out of them than is represented by just the fuzzy images.
So in the above image at Itumbula W comparing the two images the white and black "blobs" appear roughly in the same places, the latest image shows the black blobs as slightly larger, as you would imaging after around a months drilling has taken place throwing oil and mud all over the place.
So what can we make of the black and white blobs?
Well unfortunately He1 has not provided us with any nice aerial images, unlike at Tai-3, and we don't have any recent spy sat resolution Maxar images to hand, so we have to rely on the bits that He1 presents us with.
So this is an image tweeted by He1 on 19-12-2024, compared with the ground features revealed by Sentinel -
https://www.flickr.com/photos/194934344@N06/53543626513/in/dateposted-public/
Cont/...