1991-French scientists find bacteria that breaks up oil

• Sanofi Elf-Biorecherches in Labege
• Dr. Patricia Chosson, scientist who decided to put 73 types of bacteria with oil shipped from Utah (because it is rich in steranes)
• Found that bacteria of the genus Nocardia were clearly the most effective at degrading the steranes

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE6DE1E38F936A15755C0A967958260

2001- Elf Aquitaine researchers research new ways of decontaminating landfills

• the Saint-Herblain installation near Nantes
• Majority of the Saint-Herblain oil installation was cleaned using traditional open earth excavation and cleaning methods
• Experiment lasted a year
• completed successfully according to Elf

http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/libweb/elib/do/document?set=search&groupid=1&requestid=lib_standard&resultid=14&edition=&ts=481CBAD64B7C1F41197C11B83C718C01_1197388963434&start=1&urn=urn%3Abigchalk%3AUS%3BBCLib%3Bdocument%3B28850943

2002-U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory scientists find a bacteria that can eat coal

• bacteria are capable of removing harmful pollutants and could be used to produce more efficient
• cleaner burning coal
• naturally adapted to extreme conditions to see if they could change the microbes' diet
• first cultured the bacteria in a medium containing small amounts of crude oil, supplemented with other nutrients
• Surviving bacteria were transferred to new mediums with more oil and less nutrients, process repeated multiple times until the survivors could use oil as their only food source

http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/libweb/elib/do/document?set=search&groupid=1&requestid=lib_standard&resultid=9&edition=&ts=481CBAD64B7C1F41197C11B83C718C01_1197388963434&start=1&urn=urn%3Abigchalk%3AUS%3BBCLib%3Bdocument%3B51163437

2007- Bacteria found in La Brea

• Toxic asphalt
• Sequenced samples of DNA in the tar and found that the samples contained at least 200 new species, genera and families of bacteria and Archaea

http://www.geotimes.org/july07/article.html?id=nn_bacteria.html