Abstract
Sediment samples were collected from 25 strategic locations at a site on the Texas shelf before emplacement of an exploratory oil rig, during drilling and after the rig had been in place for 2 months. These sediments were analysed for aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, and thirteen gas Chromatographic parameters, used in assessing pollution, were calculated. Graphic cluster analysis, analysis of variance and discriminant analysis were applied to these parameters to view changes as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of gas Chromatographic data in monitoring sediment hydrocarbons. Changes discernible by these techniques were slight but more noticeable at stations close to the rig. Hydrocarbons in the C 14 to C 20 region of the aliphatic chromatograms were in low abundance in all samples but consisted mostly of n-C 17 and C 25 branched-chain olefins. The high molecular weight region contained high concentrations of the odd carbon numbered n-alkanes with a predominance of n-C 29. This similarity to terrestrial hydrocarbons was further confirmed by a mean δC 13 value vs. PDB of −28·0‰ for the aliphatic hydrocarbons.
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