ABSTRACT
Oil is a natural resource in the form of large deposits in the earth’s crust. Natural leakage of crude oil, as well as human activities, including the extraction, refining, and transportation of oil, leads to significant environmental pollution. Accidents during the extraction of crude oil increase the level of pollution by oil products and increase the negative impact of oil on living organisms. The scale of crude oil contamination necessitates the development and implementation of rehabilitation strategies to clean contaminated sites.
In Russia, most oil fields and oil-contaminated territories are located in the northern regions. Phyto- and bioremediation arrangements are carried out in many countries of the world, however, the effectiveness of bioremediation at low temperatures has not been studied enough to date, and the problem of clean-up from oil pollution has not yet been solved. The study of biodegradation and bioremediation processes, as well as the development of effective biopreparations and technologies for cleaning oil pollution in cold and temperate climates, remains relevant.
The paper considers the problem of oil pollution of soils (including swamps) of Russian territories located in the zone of temperate and cold climate. The factors hindering the biodegradation of oil hydrocarbons in the soil at low temperatures, and methods of treating them are described. The use of sorbents for the elimination of oil spills in the soil, as well as the method of biostimulation of native microorganisms, is considered. Information has been collected and systematized on the isolation and study of oil-degrading microorganisms by the main scientific teams of Russia, as well as the use of these microorganisms for cleaning soils from oil hydrocarbons in vitro and in situ over the past decades.
The basic principles of the combination and application of ~30 biopreparations and microbial consortia of Russian origin for the bioremediation of oil-contaminated soils are described, and their exhaustive list is given.
