Petroleum Hydrocarbon Pollution on the Sudanese Red Sea Coastal Water

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to determine the extent of petroleum hydrocarbon pollution on the Sudanese Red Sea coast (Portsudan harbor and Bashayer Marine Terminal), to achieve this goal laboratory work was conducted to determine hydrocarbon concentration. The highest concentration of TPH in seawater was found at strip I (dockyard) with the average of 80.2 mg/l, the next to the highest concentration were generally occurred at strip IV (BMT), the ranges of concentrations were between 5.8 and 24.2 mg/l with mean value of 14.98 mg/l. Values of oil concentration at strip II (South port) are much lower than those of strip I (6.8 to 10 mg/l). Higher concentrations, ranging from nil to1320 mg/kg were detected in the sediment samples. It can be concluded on this bases that most of the Portsudan harbor and BMT suffers from oil pollution in different degrees according to UNEP and AIDMO. No oil contamination was observed at strip III (North port). The GC measurements prove that hydrocarbon contaminations are due to biologic and petrogenic origin, most oil samples belong to light and middle fraction.