Microbial Remediation of Crude Oil-Contaminated Sites

Sustainable development becomes a need for economic growth of any country that allows the use of natural resources with minimum damage to our environment. The same is applied for the use of crude oil. The demand for crude oil can’t be denied as it is a major source of energy (production of electricity, cooking gas, and facilitating transportation) and raw materials for various petroleum products like solvents, fertilizers, plastics, paints, pesticides, etc. Development of remediation technology to remediate petroleum hydrocarbon-contaminated sites due to crude oil spillage during its transportation becomes essential as it contains various hazardous, toxic, and carcinogenic compounds. Compared to physical and chemical processes of remediation, bioremediation is a highly efficient and self-propelling economic process. This review article presented a brief discussion on development of bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbon in soil or in water. This article especially emphasizes the inherent characteristics of microbes that facilitate the bioremediation and the use of different biostimulants for fastest remediation of petroleum hydrocarbon-contaminated sites.