4.

Biotechnological approach for development of microbial enhanced oil

recovery technique.

Microbial processes for oil recovery:

• Limited opportunities for discovering major new oil accumulations have focused
attention on processes which improve petroleum recovery and prolong the life of
existing wells.

• The microbial processes for oil recovery are classified into three basic applications:
well bore clean up, well stimulation and enhanced waterfloods.

• Well bore clean up is normally carried out when paraffin and scale are deposited on
the well bore.

• Well stimulation and waterfloods enhancement, namely, microbial enhanced oil

recovery (MEOR), are conducted when the target reservoir and oil production
experience the following conditions: formation damage, pore damage, high water
production, poor displacement efficiency, and/or poor sweep efficiency.

• The authors have focused on MEOR because MEOR is one of the techniques
expected to be both economically feasible and environmentally friendly, while also
considerably increasing oil production.

Development of MEOR technique:

reservoir conditions necessary for MEOR processes:

• reservoir conditions necessary for MEOR processes are as follows:

• lower reservoir temperatures (below 70 °C),

• higher permeability (above 50-75 md),

• higher porosity (above 20%),

• lower total salinity (below 15%),

• appropriate pH ranges (4 to 9) and

• lower oil viscosity (above 5-50mPa.s).

Types of MEOR processes:

DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNIQUES VERIFYING MEOR EFFECTIVENESS:

• In the initial stages of the experiment, oil field conditions were investigated in detail
in order to determine what in situ metabolic processes can be supported in the
reservoir.

• It was assumed that selective plugging of highly permeable zones would be effective
for this reservoir, because there are many horizontal fractures near the production
wells, caused by the hydraulic fracturing operations.

• Successful selective plugging field operations have been reported previously [22-24],
and this methodology is regarded as an effective MEOR process.

• Fig. 7 shows the plugging mechanism in highly permeable zones.

• In conventional water flooding, water injected into the reservoir flows predominantly
into large channels for a long period of time.

• When microbes are injected, they also enter primarily the large channels, growing and
producing insoluble polymer in these places.

• As a result, insoluble polymer, including microbial cell mass, selectively plugs high
permeability zones, and injection water is diverted from the large channels into
previously un-swept areas of the reservoir.
Screening of microbes for injection in the reservoir:

• Screening of microbes [16]

• The essential parameters of microbes used for "selective plugging" are shown below.

• The microbes must:

• (1) Produce an insoluble polymer using relatively inexpensive molasses.

• (2) Propagate under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions.

• (3) Form biofilm at the surface of reservoir rock.

• (4)Propagate and produce insoluble polymer under the reservoir's unique conditions.

• Fig. 8 shows the screening protocol of microbes used for MEOR. This protocol
consists of two stages:

• (1) Microbe extractions from reservoir samples (such as reservoir core and brine) are
incubated on the molasses agar plate.

• (2) Each type of colony is incubated individually in the molasses liquid medium, and
candidate microbes are selected visually based on their ability to produce the
insoluble polymer.
• A strain CJF-002, which demonstrated the potential described above, was screened
from reservoir rock in Fuyu oilfield. Based on 16S rDNA sequences, it was identified
as a strain belonging to the Enterobacter species.