Sultanate of Oman is a beautiful country with a great people. The vision and the wise leadership of his Majesty Sultan Qaboos has paid a great importance to the environment. Oman is the only country in the third world who establish a ministry to deal with environment. The government of Oman is paying big attention to the environmental problems and trying to solve them. I have been honored to submit this report to the head of the states, his Majesty Sultan Qaboos

I Brief Introduction

Groundwater resources in Oman are considered very precious. It is used practically as a main source for various purposes, domestic, agricultural, industrial, commercial and most important as a main source for drinking. Even in the some areas the desalinated water is supplied to some major towns in conjunction with groundwater. Inasmuch as groundwater provides drinking water to the majority of the population, the quality of groundwater is of paramount importance. The public water suppliers (MEW, and other distributors) are obligated to furnish water to their consumer that meet the Omani drinking-water standard. Therefore, the government of Oman took all the precaution measurements to protect the groundwater from over exploitation and contamination. The head of the country, his Majesty Sultan Qaboos stressed in many occasions in his speeches that groundwater should be preserved, wisely used and protected.

The groundwater in the country plays a great role in the development. In the country there are more than 128,000 wells tapping the major aquifers and around 4100 different types of Aflajes, 3095 of them functioning and some of them its water originates from the groundwater

Groundwater contamination is one of the major problems facing the country and of great concern for the Ministry of Water Resources (MWR) and Ministry of Regional Municipality and Environment (MRME). The contaminated groundwater is not only reducing the available water resources for use but also pose a threat to the human health.

A variety of human activities stemming from agricultural, industrial, community, and residential sources, as well as natural processes can contaminate groundwater. In Oman there are wide variety of materials have been identified as contaminants in groundwater such as synthetic organic chemicals, hydrocarbons, inorganic cations & anions, and pathogens. These contaminants could originating from under storage tanks (UST), oil pipeline, septic tanks, municipal landfills, saltwater intrusion, oil injection wells and others. Nevertheless, some of these potential sources pose much threat to groundwater than others. Hydrocarbon leakage through UST or oil pipeline is extremely of great threat to the groundwater in different areas. Therefore, this preliminary report will focus on the hydrocarbon contamination represented by oil products.

While we should bear in mind that groundwater contamination by hydrocarbon is a big problem, and that serious efforts are needed to protect the groundwater resources, it should be noted that only very few locations has been documented with hydrocarbon pollution. This may be because monitoring for contamination has focused on public water supplies, which are generally afforded some level of protection, while the release of substances known to contaminate ground water is undoubtedly more widespread. However, the documented contaminated sites by oil products at the MWR have been detected by accidents and not through the present groundwater monitoring program.

The hydrocarbon contamination to the groundwater subject to this study was originated from the leakage of the crude oil pipeline, UST, landfills and injection wells. Many locations in different areas have been contaminated by enormous amount of oil contamination. Only the four areas that have been visited recently will be described. These areas are in the following locations Nizwa, Zukait, Bilad Bani Bu Hassan, and Barka. In addition to that the potential oil contamination to the groundwater from the PDO wells will be characterized.