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Laboratory Methods for Evaluating Migrated High Molecular Weight Hydrocarbons in Marine Sediments at Naturally Occurring Oil Seeps

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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A laboratory study has been conducted to determine the best methods for the detection of C10 to C40 hydrocarbons at naturally occurring oil seeps in marine sediments. The results indicate that a commercially available method using hexane to extract sediments and gas chromatography to screen the resulting extract is effective at recognizing the presence of migrated hydrocarbons at concentrations between 50 to 5,000 ppm. When the oil charge is unbiodegraded the level of charge is effectively tracked by the sum of n-alkanes in the gas chromatogram. However, once the charge oil becomes biodegraded, with the loss of n-alkanes and isoprenoids, the level of charge is tracked by the quantification of the Unresolved Complex Mixture (UCM). The use of GC-MS was also found to be very effective for the recognition of petroleum related hydrocarbons and results indicate that GC-MS would be a very effective tool for screening samples at concentrations below 50 ppm oil charge.

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Title Laboratory Methods for Evaluating Migrated High Molecular Weight Hydrocarbons in Marine Sediments at Naturally Occurring Oil Seeps
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/5e025ce7-b99d-4315-b41e-a91c6158836f
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 22/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage Australia
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Laboratory Methods for Evaluating Migrated High Molecular Weight Hydrocarbons in Marine Sediments at Naturally Occurring Oil Seeps". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/laboratory-methods-for-evaluating-migrated-high-molecular-weight-hydrocarbons-in-marine-sedimen