Isolation of actinobacterium was done by enrichment technique. Bitumen unit soil (10 g) was spiked with a mixture of PAHs (anthracene, fluorene, phenanthrene and pyrene 100 lg/g each) in Bushnell and Haas medium and incubated for 15 days at 30 ± 1C. Subsequently 1 ml of sample was withdrawn, serially diluted and plated on Bushnell and Haas medium plates spiked with PAH mixture containing 100 ppm each of anthracene, fluorene,phenanthrene and pyrene. Typical powdery colonies were picked up and purified on glucose-yeast-malt extract medium. The purified isolate was characterized for different phenotypic traits following standard procedures described in Bergey’s manual of Systematic Bacteriology (Kreig and Holt 1984).