Two of the largest crude oil-polluted areas in the world are the semi-enclosed Mediterranean and Red Seas, but the effect of chronic pollution remains incompletely understood on a large scale. We compared the influence of environmental and geographical constraints and anthropogenic forces (hydrocarbon input) on bacterial communities in eight geographically separated oil-polluted sites along the...

Crude oil and petroleum products are widespread water and soil pollutants resulting from marine and terrestrial spillages. International statistics of oil spill sizes for all incidents indicate that the majority of oil spills are small (less than 7 tonnes). The major accidents that happen in the oil industry contribute only a small fraction of the total oil which enters the environment. However...

Sea ice decline is anticipated to increase human access to the Arctic Ocean allowing for offshore oil and gas development in once inaccessible areas. Given the potential negative consequences of an oil spill on marine wildlife populations in the Arctic, it is important to understand the magnitude of impact a large spill could have on wildlife to inform response planning efforts. In this study w...

This paper presents some considerations about environmental consequences of the spills and also about oil spill detection and control. Afterwards, it presents a computational structure that has been developed to forecast the time-space evolution of oil spills in marine environments. This structure was developed based on widely used mathematical formulations for oil spreading and weathering proc...

This paper explores the possibility of developing early warning indicators based on incident investigation. The use of early warning indicators may contribute to ensure that oil companies produce oil and gas without harmful spills. The incident investigated was a hydraulic oil leak from the Eirik Raude drilling rig during exploration drilling in the Barents Sea in April 2005. The incident is an...

The number of marine pollution arising from illegal oil dischargers from ship tank or bilge pumping is much greater than those spectacular ship accidents. Active microwave sensors deployed on satellites are an important tool in oil spill detection. Among the many different sensors synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is possibly the most suited for oil spill (OS) monitoring and identification, becaus...

The coagulation of oil in water is potentially cost-effective for removing oil from water. A coagulant consisting of sawdust (79.6% by volume), bentonite (15.8% by volume), and calcium hydroxide (4.7% by volume) gives coagulation efficiency of ≥94% and coagulation time of ≤ 45 s. The resulting coagulated material (a semisolid) floats on water. Its oil (liquid) content, which decreases with a de...