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The increased industrialization and rapid demand for petroleum and its product as an energy source has resulted in accidental oil spills, industrial runoff, and leakage of underground tanks and pipelines. This has led to the contamination of environmental compartments and needs utmost attention as it finds an easy entry through the food chain, causing severe threats. Petroleum hydrocarbons are the complex heterogeneous mixture of aliphatic and aromatic organic compounds considered as carcinogenic, neurotoxic, and endocrine-disrupting agents. Various management strategies have been proposed for the remediation of petroleum hydrocarbons, still mostly expensive and leading to incomplete decomposition of contaminants. So, immense attention has been paid to advancing and demonstrating current cost-effective microbial techniques that are efficient in remediation without harming the existing environment. In that regard, microbial glycolipid biosurfactant-assisted remediation strategy is treated as one of the most prominent approaches of today. Therefore, the sources and ecotoxicological consequences of petroleum contaminant footprint in different environmental compartments are the main emphasis of this review, along with the in situ and ex situ remediation options aided by microbial glycolipids for their control. The paper also outlines the difficulties and restrictions related to the use of glycolipid biosurfactants, as well as monitoring techniques for evaluating efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]