Oily sludge discharged from crude oil storage tanks has received widespread attention. In this work, a consortium with the high-efficient degradation ability of TPH in oily sludge was developed. Screening of the high-efficient single strain and the effective combination by different strains were conducted in a liquid system supplemented with TPH extracted from the tank cleaning oily sludge as the sole carbon source. Among the tested strains, strain NYGH, strain T1, and strain T2 showed relatively higher values of biomass and degradation efficiency of TPH. The consortium contained 50 % of strain NYGH and 50 % of strain T2 led to about 91 % TPH degradation within 5 days. Compared to that of the systems with a single strain, the degradation efficiency of the TPH of the system with the optimized consortium increased by 17.53∼34.38 %. This may benefit from the complementary effect of priority metabolic carbon sources of strain NYGH and strain T2. The slurry phase degradation experiment of tank cleaning oily sludge by the consortium led to a 78 % TPH degradation within 9 days. It suggested that the optimized consortium containing strain NYGH and strain T2 has great potential as the candidate for bioremediation of oily sludge.