Impact of Oil Field-Produced Water Discharges on Sediments: A Case Study of Sabkhat Boujemal, Sfax, Tunisia

Oil companies are considered to be a source of chronic pollution with continual discharge of wastewaters into the environment. Thus, the impact of petroleum contamination from French–Tunisian Oil Company on the endorheic basin Sabkhat Boujemal is assessed. This area is a continental depression that has no relation with the sea; instead this basin is just an evaporative system. The results show that aliphatic n-alkanes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) concentrations, measured on surficial (0–4 cm) sandy sediments, range from 705 to 4560 mg/kg −1 dry sediment and from 11 to 1124 mg Kg −1 dry sediment, respectively. The spatial distribution of these concentrations shows high levels in the vicinity of the oiled water discharge. The distribution pattern of n-alkanes with no odd or even dominance, high levels of unresolved complex mixture (UCM) (198.1–1500 μg/g−1 dry sediment), associated to the combination of different evaluation indices enhance this assessment. Indeed, levels close to 1 for both car...