<p>Petroleum hydrocarbons are widespread soil contaminants originating from oil extraction, transportation, and industrial activities, posing long term risks to soil quality, groundwater, and human health. Their chemical heterogeneity, strong sorption to soil matrices, and variable bioavailability make remediation highly site specific and technically challenging. Although numerous remediation technologies have been developed, many existing reviews remain largely descriptive and insufficiently link remediation mechanisms with performance outcomes. This review critically examines physical, chemical, and biological remediation strategies for petroleum hydrocarbon contaminated soils, emphasizing how contaminant characteristics and soil properties govern remediation effectiveness, limitations, and applicability. Quantitative performance trends, operational constraints, and potential secondary impacts are compared across remediation approaches and linked to underlying mechanisms such as phase transfer, chemical reactivity, and biological metabolism. A One Health perspective is applied as an analytical framework to evaluate remediation strategies beyond contaminant removal, incorporating human exposure reduction, soil ecological recovery, and land reuse safety. Within this framework, biologically based remediation approaches are discussed alongside physical and chemical methods to highlight tradeoffs between remediation efficiency, sustainability, and long-term soil function restoration. This review provides a mechanism informed and performance linked synthesis to support rational remediation strategy selection.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>