Petroleum Leakage Contamination in Abadan Refinery: Determination of Depth and Area Extent

A rapidly expanding chemical and petroleum industry has been responsible for great improvements in the quality of urban areas in Iran over the last 100 years. The Abadan Refinery is located between the Arvandrud and Bahmanshir rivers in the highly populated Abadan city. These rivers supplies urban, industrial, and agricultural waters to Abadan city. During the war between Iran and Iraq, leakage of enormous volumes of oil and refined petroleum products from storage tanks and pipelines at the Abadan refinery to the surrounding environment occurred. In this work, twenty boreholes were investigated by considering petroleum leakage to the surrounding area during and after the war. Geological conditions and petroleum contamination underlying the Abadan refinery was determined from cores during the drilling of the boreholes. Oil saturation of cores was defined for each borehole. Also, porosity, and density of the cores were measured in this project. Water table fluctuations were measured for a period of one year, to determine the underground water movement patterns at Abadan refinery and the connections with surrounded rivers. The extent of the petroleum contaminated underground layers was determined in this study and the results show that the majority of existing petroleum in underground layers at Abadan refinery was absorbed by clay. The average depth of contaminated underground layers is from the surface to the depth of 4.5 meter.

کلیدواژه ها:

Clay ، Environment ، Petroleum Pollution ، Underground waters ، Abadan Refinery