Study on oil spills in the North Sea forties field observed in TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X imagery

In this study, we focus on the investigations of oil slicks observed by TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X operating over the drilling platforms in Forties oil field, the largest one in the North Sea. Previous researches indicate that oil spills observed by consecutive SAR images represent the same leaks, but in this paper, we presented four cases which suggest completely different situations of oil spill variations in the sea surface. Our new findings suggest that groups of oil slicks with similar features observed by consecutive SAR acquisitions might have leaked at different times during the interval between the two consecutive observations.