Removal of spilled oil over the sea and the river has become one of the urgent problem in these days. Removing oil using mechanical devices are recommended because chemical dispersion can cause the secondary contamination in the environment. In the present study a series of experiments were carried out to study the effect of working conditions of a belt type skimmer on the rate of recovery for the spilled oil. The oil chosen for the present experiment was diesel oil. Three different situations, namely, upward, downward, up-and-downward pickup have been investigated for various contact angles, belt speeds and oil thicknesses. The results show that the rate of oil recovery for the case of downward pickup with a contact angle of 45.deg. shows the highest among all the conditions. For the removal of spilled diesel oil the optimal belt speed can be found as the critical value to reach the saturated pickup rate for a given oil thickness. The recovery rate of bunker C oil shows 4-6 times higher than that for diesel oil. And the optimal belt speed for bunker C oil can be found less than that for diesel oil for the same slick thickness.