Geochemical Assessment of Tar Balls That Arrived in 2022 along the Northeast Coast of Brazil and Their Relationship with the 2019 Oil Spill Disaster

In August 2019, Brazil experienced the country’s greatest environmental disaster involving an oil spill appearing on the beaches. After 3 years, high volumes of tar balls appeared, raising questions regarding their possible relationship with the oil spill of 2019. Herein, an organic geochemistry investigation was performed using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and electrospray ionization coupled with Fourier transform mass spectrometry (ESI FT–MS), with the aim of characterizing the chemical components of spilled oils collected in 2019 and comparing them to tar balls from 2022. The contents of n-alkanes, isoprenoids, alkyl cyclohexanes, steranes, terpanes, and phenanthrenes/anthracenes, together with biomarker ratios, suggested that the tar balls originated from a virgin/unprocessed oil with the profile of paraffinic deposits in oil storage tanks, unlike the oils from 2019, which had the characteristics of a processed oil. An interesting difference in polar compound distribution was identified by ESI FT–MS analysis, with lower molecular weight polar components found in the samples from 2022