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. That’s 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