Abstract
The industrial revolution has led to significant increases in the consumption of petroleum hydrocarbons. Concomitant with this increase, hydrocarbon pollution has become a global problem resulting from emissions related to operational use, releases during production, pipeline failures and tanker spills. Importantly, in addition to these anthropogenic sources of hydrocarbon pollution, natural seeps alone account for about 50% of total petroleum hydrocarbon releases in the aquatic environment (National Research Council, 2003). The annual input from natural seeps would form a layer of hydrocarbons 20 molecules thick on the sea surface globally if it remained un-degraded (Prince, 2005). By contrast with natural seeps, many oil spills, e.g. Sea Empress (Milford Haven, UK), Prestige (Galicia, Spain), EXXON Valdez (Prince William Sound, Alaska, USA), released huge amounts of oil (thousands to hundreds of thousand tonnes; Table 24.1) in a locally confined area over a short period of time with a huge acute impact on the marine environment. These incidents have attracted the attention of both the general public and the scientific community due to their great impact on coastal ecosystems. Although many petroleum hydrocarbons are toxic, they are degraded by microbial consortia naturally present in marine ecosystems.
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Acknowledgement
This project was supported by BACTOIL (MC-IIF-39431), a European Commission Marie Curie Fellowship award to Arvind Singh, and is gratefully acknowledged.
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Singh, A.K., Sherry, A., Gray, N.D., Jones, M.D., Röling, W.F., Head, I.M. (2010). How Specific Microbial Communities Benefit the Oil Industry: Dynamics of Alcanivorax spp. in Oil-Contaminated Intertidal Beach Sediments Undergoing Bioremediation. In: Whitby, C., Skovhus, T. (eds) Applied Microbiology and Molecular Biology in Oilfield Systems. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9252-6_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9252-6_24
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