Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Oil in China

Posted by James Turnbull, Sunday, 8th January 2006

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Castle Peak Power Station in Hong Kong is one of the largest coal-fired power stations in the world and these two oil tanks are clearly marked with the Hanzi characters for Oil. There’s more about the plant on their website.

Black Point Power Station also has large type for Oil as well as smaller characters for Water just to the north (which are much clearer if you view the sight in Google Earth).

It’s cool to see some more Hanzi large type, but I wonder why have they done this? In light of Australia’s recent worries about terrorists using Google Earth to target their nuclear power plant why would China be shouting out the location of their highly flammable materials?

Thanks: Jeremy & Billy Leung

10 Responses to 'Oil in China'

  1. Robert says:

    Wow. Im not saying they are asking for terrorism, but exactly who are they benefiting by writing that it is a hugely flammable substance for all pilots to see?
    Its not like during inventory they are going to say, “Hey Chao! Whats in this tank?”: “Hang on I’ll check the roof!”

  2. remme says:

    æ²¹

    =Oil

    And I don’t know why, either.

  3. purpureleaf says:

    hi, I am from China, just about 100km north west of those “oil”s(Guangzhou, indeed).
    I think when they paint these “oil”s, Google Map was not out there. Anyway, it is really a good way to kill some extra energy to paint these huge “oil”s which can only be seen by satellites.
    I tried to use google to locate my house, but google says “…we don’t have imagery at this zoom level…”. Did I do anything wrong? Or google simply doesn’t have enough data of Guangzhou?

  4. Robert says:

    [QUOTE]Did I do anything wrong? Or google simply doesn’t have enough data of Guangzhou? [/QUOTE] No, its just that Google doesnt have high enough resolution for that area. So if you zoomed in any further it would be a big blur. My house didnt have good data until a few months ago and now it is VERY high resolution. Probs highest in UK.

    Sorry if the quote marks didnt come out.

  5. purpureleaf says:

    Oh, I got it.

  6. oviphagy says:

    china also has the largest military force on the planet so if somebody is dumb enough to attack them, it will be the last mistake they make.

  7. DJ Swammi says:

    Just to the north there appears to be a rollercoaster built in a lake (Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth. Any idea what it is?

  8. I don’t think you need Google Earth to work out that a big tank, in a location that uses oil, is likely to contain (gasp!) oil.

  9. KMB says:

    I just know that “rollercoaster” is not in Hong Kong any more, it’s at the north of Hong Kong, may be in Shenzhen, China

  10. Seajay says:

    If pressed for a guess, I’d say it might be a warning to helicopters that the top of the container isn’t a safe landing spot. But WTF do I know.

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