Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery by Daniyar

Otegen
Nowadays oil productions have been decreasing in many countries of the
world due to oil field maturity and increase in energy demand. That sets a
challenge for oil companies to come up with newer and more efficient
enhanced oil recovery techniques. In spite of significant investments in other
sources of energy fossil fuels will still remain the major supply of energy
source.
During oil production, primary oil recovery can extract about third of all oil in
a reservoir, while 15-25% can be recovered by secondary methods, leaving
more than half of all hydrocarbon resources under the ground. The extraction
of this residual oil is the target of many oil companies, and it amounts to
about 2-4 trillion barrels. Thats why there is a continuous search for a cheap
and efficient technology that can help in recovering residual oil.
One of such methods is Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR). This
enhanced oil recovery technique represents the use of microorganisms and
their byproducts to extract the remaining oil from the reservoirs. It can be
potentially implemented with very low operating costs and produce up to
40% of the remaining oil. MEOR process applications include:

Permeability modification through selective plugging;

Viscosity and interfacial tension reduction through the production of
gases, surfactants, acids, alcohols by microorganisms;
Removal of near-wellbore paraffin deposits.

Commonly used bacterial species for those applications are Bacillus and
Clostridium. The Bacillus species produce surfactants, acids and some gases,
and Clostridium produce surfactants, gases, alcohols and solvents. Few
Bacillus species also produce polymers.
However, a major reason for the failure of MEOR technology is insufficient
consideration of the reservoir conditions. The activities of microbes
employed in MEOR process depends on the physical and chemical conditions
they encounter in the reservoirs. These include salinity, temperature,
pressure, pH, redox potential etc. Although these reservoir conditions vary a
great deal from one reservoir to another, all these factors which are mostly
physical and environmental can affects the growth of bacteria, proliferation,
metabolism and survival and limit their ability to produce desired quantities
of metabolites needed for enhanced oil recovery. However it is of the general
opinion that with proper planning most of these factors can be overcome.

References:
1. Sidsel Marie Nielsen (2010). Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Advanced
Reservoir Stimulation
2. Jimoh Ismaila Adetunji (2012). Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery