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recovery / Recovery methods / Water-assisted methods for improved oil recovery
(IOR) / Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR)
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Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR)

Stimulating bacterial growth at an oil/water interface causes a substantial reduction
in interfacial tension (IFT), which in turn can help to achieve improved oil recovery
(IOR).

The prime consideration with MEOR is how much additional oil can be produced
from reservoirs by stimulating the growth of indigenous or injected bacteria. This is
accomplished by adding nutrients to injection water.

When certain types of microbes are stimulated in core samples of reservoir

sandstone in the laboratory, they improve oil production by mobilising residual oil
trapped in the pore space.

This is probably because the bacteria induce changes in the IFT between the oil and
the water, and possibly also because they cause a change in wetting properties.

However, proving this experimentally on growing bacterial systems is notoriously

difficult.

Researchers at Statoil and Norways Sintef foundation have made a significant

advance by quantitatively monitoring changes in IFT at a simple oil/water interface
using an advanced laser-light scattering technique.

Microbially induced reduction in interfacial tension with time.

The graph of IFT versus time shows that the bacteria induced a 6,000-fold
exponential reduction in the IFT.

This development is thought to occur because the bacterial growth requires both
carbon from the oil and nutrients from the formation water. Since they occur in the
water, the bacteria need to penetrate the oil/water interface to access the carbon.

They achieve this by producing a biosurfactant (tenside), which reduces the IFT and
thus lowers the energy needed for breakthrough.

Statoil is thought to be the only company in the world using MEOR on an offshore
field, in this case Norne in the Norwegian Sea.

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