## 1 Introduction  
Soils contaminated with petroleum have received attention in recent times, especially due to the financial and technical implications that are associated with decontaminating soil polluted with petroleum [1; 2; 3; 4]. Soil is usually the last destination of both organic and inorganic contaminants, and, as such, it has remained one of the major recipients of oil spills and other petroleum products [5]. Petroleum, as a hydrocarbon, is a mixture of saturated hydrocarbons, aromatic compounds, asphaltenes, and resins. Petroleum contamination of the soil often comes from activities such as oil exploitation, smelting, oil transportation, etc. [6]. Among the largest producers of petroleum worldwide are the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico. Mexico produced a total of 19,303.34 thousand barrels in 2021 [7]. In Mexico, the largest production of crude petroleum takes place in two regions which are the Burgos Basin in Tamaulipas and the Tabasco coast. In the Burgos Basin, the production of crude petroleum was estimated to be around 11.230495 thousand barrels per day in 2021, while the production of petroleum in the Tabasco coast was estimated to be around 3404.62852 thousand barrels per day in 2021. Owing to the high volume of crude oil being extracted in these regions, the spill of oil into the surrounding soil environment is inevitable. This implies that there will be a need for decontaminating such soil with the oil spills. The decontamination of petroleum pollution has been linked to several techniques or methods that may be chemical-based or biological. The biological method for the decontamination of oil polluted soil has been described as a cheaper and more effective means of bioremediating oil-contaminated soil [8; 9]. The biological method for the remediation of crude oil-contaminated soil can involve the use of microbes or plants [10; 11; 12; 13]. This biological oil decontamination technique is also known as bioremediation. bioremediation is a biotechnological technique that makes use of microorganisms for the cleaning of crude oil-contaminated soil [3; 4; 5; 14; 15; 16; 17]. Today, this technique employs \"omics\" approaches to identify the culturable and unculturable bacterial and fungal composition involved in degradation processes and restoration of soil [9; 18; 19]. Many studies have identified and characterized microorganisms that can actively degrade low-molecular-weight polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) [20; 21]. Microbial decontamination of crude contaminated soil is one of the most studied methods for the remediation of crude oil-contaminated soil [22; 23; 24]. The use of microbes for the decontamination of soil depends on several factors, one of which is the amount of indigenous population of microbes in such an environment [9; 21; 25; 26; 27; 28]. Microbial populations in the soil depend on the physicochemical characteristics of the soil, such as pH, moisture, organic C, and nutrient content. These soil characteristics are often influenced by different environmental parameters such as climate, land use, management, and season [29]. The diversity of the microbial community in the soil is thus related to the function and structure of the ecosystem [30]. However, the populations may vary considerably in different ecosystems even under the same climatic conditions; this variation could be due to changes in biotic and abiotic factors in the ecosystem. Because of this, the bacterial population in the soil in an ecosystem is sometimes used as an indicator of soil quality [25; 31]. In addition to the use of microbes, bioremediation of soils contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons (PHCs) can also be achieved by taking advantage of the interaction of plants with microorganisms [15; 32; 33]. Thus, a combination of phytoremediation and microbial remediation can be adopted for the effective decontamination of petroleum-contaminated soil. Rhizreediation has been used to reduce total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs) [34].