The Identification of Water-Borne Oils
Authors: Wright Charles C. 
Published: December 2007

This paper was prepared for the Symposium on the Handling of Oilfield Waters of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Los Angeles, Calif., Dec. 4–5, 1972. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made.

Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

A summary of the work that is presently under way to develop standardized procedures for sampling, preserving and analyzing water-borne oils is presented.

This work is aimed at enabling any suitably equipped laboratory in the world to determine the origin of water-borne oils.

The present state of the art does not permit the positive identification of an unknown permit the positive identification of an unknown oil from a single analysis. It only permits the comparison of the analysis of the unknown with the analyses of samples of suspected sources. If an excellent match is obtained, the unknown is said to be identified.

A brief description of each of the currently utilized techniques is given.

This paper does not give detailed analytic procedures, but does give references for such procedures, but does give references for such procedures. procedures

Introduction

The identification of oils found in oil slicks on the ocean or in harbor waters and oil substances found on beaches has been of increasing interest since the 1940's.

Several factors have spurred this interest, among them being (1) the desire of pollution enforcement agencies to fix the blame, (2) the desire of the natural target of public outcry - the major oil companies - to prove that they were not to blame and (3) the interest of scientists to determine what factions, if any, were causing more damage to the environment.

While these interests do not coincide, they, together with other lesser interests, have been responsible for a growing momentum in the search for simpler and more certain methods to identify water-borne oils.

This paper is intended to be a presentation of the state of the art of identification of water-borne oils for those persons not seriously working in the field. Serious workers, or those desiring precise laboratory directions, are referred to the cited literature, as an in-depth presentation would fill a book. presentation would fill a book. The subject is a complex problem with many facets, not all of which are of interest to every party.

As a result of the growing interest, a subcommittee was established in June, 1971, at the Pittsburgh, Pa., meeting of the Committee D-19 on Water of the American Society for Testing and Materials.