🛢 🇦🇪 🇮🇷 Iran appears to have struck ADNOC's Bu Hasa facility southwest of Abu Dhabi, one of the UAE's largest onshore oil and gas fields. Sentinel-3 imagery from today shows a black smoke plume roughly 50 km long over the site.

NASA FIRMS recorded a fire radiative power of 143 megawatts at the facility, with the VIIRS mid-infrared channel reading 367 Kelvin, the absolute ceiling the sensor can register, meaning the fire is likely hotter than the data shows. Flights near Abu Dhabi were disrupted earlier today.

Bu Hasa crude feeds the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, the UAE's only export route that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, its own route around Hormuz, has been struck 3 weeks ago.

That’s not a normal Bu Hasa flare. The same FIRMS tile read 1.34 MW a month ago and 6.89 MW a week ago. Today it read 143 MW, at the sensor's ceiling. Flare stacks also don't produce a 50 km smoke plume.

📎 The Hormuz Letter