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Oil Seeps and Coastal Bitumen

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Geochemistry

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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Definitions

An oil seep is a place where liquid or semi-solid petroleum, commonly in association with gaseous hydrocarbons, escapes at a low rate to the Earth’s surface. Those located on the sea floor produce tar or asphalt that may eventually be transported to the shore where it strands as coastal bitumen.

Introduction

Each year an estimated 600,000 metric tons of oil enters the global marine environment from natural seepage (NRC 2003), accounting for 47% of the total annual input and making it the single most important contributor of oil to the world’s oceans (Kvenvolden and Cooper 2003). In the wake of major accidental releases of crude oil, such as the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska (Kvenvolden et al. 1995), and the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico (Boufadel et al. 2014), it becomes necessary to distinguish the resulting marine tar residues from coastal bitumen (natural or anthropogenic) already present on the adjacent shorelines....

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, School of Physical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    David McKirdy

  2. CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering (CESRE), Kensington, NSW, Australia

    Andrew Ross & Asrarur Talukder

Authors
  1. David McKirdy
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  2. Andrew Ross
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  3. Asrarur Talukder
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David McKirdy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth, Cornell University Department of Earth, Ithaca, New York, USA

    William M. White

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McKirdy, D., Ross, A., Talukder, A. (2018). Oil Seeps and Coastal Bitumen. In: White, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geochemistry. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39193-9_180-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39193-9_180-1

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