Applications of biomarkers for identifying sources of natural and pollutant hydrocarbons in the marine environment

Over the past few years, many thousands of compounds have identified in crude oils using techniques such as capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Some of these have quite distinctive chemical structures which are closely related to the organic compounds produced by plants, bacteria and algae. These {open_quote}biomarkers{close_quote} have proven to be very useful in petroleum exploration for identifying the likely source rocks from which the oils were derived. They are also very useful in studies of modern day pollution of the marine environment for identifying contamination by crude oil and petroleum-derived products. Although a wide range of hydrocarbons are available for oil spill fingerprinting, most attention has been given to some of the better-studied biomarkers which are readily analyzed using selected ion monitoring GC-MS techniques.