The unprecedented engagement of scientists from government, academia, and industry enabled multiple unanticipated and unique problems to be addressed during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. During the months between the initial blowout on April 20, 2010, and the final well kill on September 19, 2010, researchers prepared options, analyses of tradeoffs, assessments, and calculations of uncertain...

The Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU), leased to BP (previously British Petroleum, now simply “BP”, with the previously-used promotional tagline of “beyond petroleum”) suffered an explosive “blowout” on April 20, 2010 which resulted in what is now the largest offshore oil spill in United States (U.S.) history, and currently estimated to be at least the seco...

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 estim...

Black Sea receives 1,125,839 tons of organic matter, 575,000 tons mineral nitrogen, 55,000 tons mineral phosphorus, 30,000 tons organic phosphorus, 90,000 tons iron, 206,000 tons petroleum and petroleum products, 48,000 tons surfactant, 12,000 tons zinc, 67,000 tons manganese, 4,500 tons lead, 2,800 tons copper, 900 tons cadmium and 80 tons of mercury in a year from land based sources. All thes...

Petroleum has been recognized as a potential environmental contaminant since shortly after the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Reports of the biological consequences of ship wrecks involving cargos of crude and fuel oil began to appear in the popular and scientific press. Scientific literature on the subject was sparse until after World War II when reports of the effects of oil pollution be...

Microbial bioremediation of petroleum wastewater by phenol-degrading-bacteria holds promise in circumventing the issue of petroleum-spill related pollution. Herein, biodegradation of petroleum wastewater samples collected from oil refinery site was carried out in a fluidized bed bioreactor by Ca-alginate immobilized biomass of phenol-degrading strains of Bacillus cereus (AKG1 MTCC9817 and AKG2 ...

Taiwan has implemented a floating oil-price mechanism since 2007, which is aimed at connecting the domestic oil price with the international oil price. Given that the consumers’ behavior may change once the price truly responds to its cost and the air quality may consequently be improved, this study investigates the effect of oil price on the concentration of 7 air pollutants, taking the adopti...