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Abstract. The Gulf of Guinea is a very active area with respect to maritime traffic as well as oil and gas exploitation. Due to the failure of some actors to comply with environmental standards, this region has been subject to a large number of oil pollution episodes. This anthropogenic oil pollution is in addition to natural oil seepage from the ocean floor. This study aims to detect oil slicks in the Gulf of Guinea and to analyse their spatial distribution using synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) images. Previous works have already locally mapped oil slicks in this area; however, to our knowledge, this study is the first to achieve a global statistical analysis based on 10 years of radar images covering 17 exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the Gulf of Guinea. The present study is based on a database of 3644 SAR images collected between 2002 and 2012 by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) sensor onboard the European Spatial Agency (ESA) Envisat mission, and these images allowed the identification of 18 063 oil slicks. The spatial distribution of these oil slicks is available from Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6470470 (Najoui, 2022b). The oil slicks detected in this work encompass both oil spills of anthropogenic origin and oil seeps of natural origin (natural oil reservoir leaks). A set of 100 georeferenced oil spills is also available from Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6907743 (Najoui, 2022a).

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Abstract. Gulf of Guinea is a very active area regarding maritime traffic as well as oil and gas exploitation (platforms). As a result of some actors of both sectors that fail to comply with environmental standards, the region is subject to a large number of oil pollutions. This study aims to detect oil slicks spilled in the Gulf of Guinea and analyse their spatial distribution using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. If previous works have already locally mapped oil slicks in this area, this study is the first one to achieve a global statistical analysis based on a very high number of radar images covering 17 Exclusive Economic Zones of the Gulf of Guinea. To carry out the present study, a database of 3,644 SAR images, collected between 2002 and 2012 by the Advanced SAR (ASAR) sensor onboard the European Spatial Agency (ESA) Envisat mission has been used. This database allowed the identification of 18,063 oil slicks. These "Oil slicks" herein detected regroup: "oil spills" – of anthropogenic origin- and "oil seeps" – of natural origin (natural oil reservoir leaks).