Cleansing of crude oil-contaminated sand is anticipated to rely heavily on the ability of cleaning solution to access the contamination sites and the bonding strength between crude oil and sand. In this research, the actual produced sand sample from an oilfield and reference sand sample taken from a beach were subjected to porosity, permeability, and wettability tests. Results revealed that the particle size of the sands dominated the porosity and permeability outcomes. While the porosity of the reference sand at 46.64 was barely higher than the produced sand, the permeability (in Darcy) of the former exceeded the latter by 10 folds. In wettability and interfacial study, the highest adhesion strengths at the oil-sand interface were calculated according to Young-Dupre equation. The computed values were 58.42 mN/m for the reference sand and 65.88 mN/m for the produced sand, assuming 3-species geometric-mean model from Owen/Wendt theory. The types of intermolecular bonding at the interface were dispersive (London dispersion force from Van der Waals bonding), dipole-induced dipole attraction and mechanical adhesions, justifiable through elementary analysis. All the findings including corroboration from thermogravimetric analysis suggest that relatively higher energy was required to remediate the produced sand from oil reservoir as compared to the reference sand retrieved from shoreline. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.