Survey of Technology for Remediation of Oil-Contaminated Soil in Kuwait

Millions of barrels of crude oil gushed freely from these wells, creating oil lakes in low-lying areas of the desert. Lakes were formed at more than 500 different locations, covering a total area initially estimated at 49 km. While the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has recovered 22.5 million barrels of the spilled crude; the remaining amount, is considered unrecoverable by standard methods. An estimated 22.7 million m of contaminated soil remains, threatening pollution of precious groundwater resources (Table 1). Figure 1 Satellite photo of oil lake (Burgan oil field)