Treatment of petroleum spills and organic solvent pollution in general is an important issue; several techniques are under development to remove oil from water. The use of absorbents is one of the most common techniques to tackle this problem. These absorbents can be classified based on their characteristics of recyclability into irreversible and reversible ones. In this review, we discuss the application of several materials as oil absorbents, according to their classification and characteristics such as hydrophobicity, surface area and oil absorption capacity. Also, the fabrication methods for some materials are presented and analyzed.