scholarly journals Exploiting Microbes in the Petroleum Field: Analyzing the Credibility of Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR)

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (15) ◽  
pp. 4684
Author(s):  
Marzuqa Quraishi ◽  
Shashi Kant Bhatia ◽  
Soumya Pandit ◽  
Piyush Kumar Gupta ◽  
Vivek Rangarajan ◽  
...  

Crude oil is a major energy source that is exploited globally to achieve economic growth. To meet the growing demands for oil, in an environment of stringent environmental regulations and economic and technical pressure, industries have been required to develop novel oil salvaging techniques. The remaining ~70% of the world’s conventional oil (one-third of the available total petroleum) is trapped in depleted and marginal reservoirs, and could thus be potentially recovered and used. The only means of extracting this oil is via microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR). This tertiary oil recovery method employs indigenous microorganisms and their metabolic products to enhance oil mobilization. Although a significant amount of research has been undertaken on MEOR, the absence of convincing evidence has contributed to the petroleum industry’s low interest, as evidenced by the issuance of 400+ patents on MEOR that have not been accepted by this sector. The majority of the world’s MEOR field trials are briefly described in this review. However, the presented research fails to provide valid verification that the microbial system has the potential to address the identified constraints. Rather than promising certainty, MEOR will persist as an unverified concept unless further research and investigations are carried out.

Geophysics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 78 (5) ◽  
pp. E261-E269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Heenan ◽  
Abigail Porter ◽  
Dimitrios Ntarlagiannis ◽  
Lily Y. Young ◽  
Dale D. Werkema ◽  
...  

The demand for more efficient and economic oil recovery techniques has driven research into novel extraction approaches, including microbial enhanced methods. Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) is an underutilized technology that could significantly enhance tertiary oil recovery. Previous research has shown the spectral induced polarization (SIP) method to be sensitive to microbial degradation of hydrocarbons, so the method should therefore be sensitive to MEOR treatments. To test this hypothesis, heavy-oil-containing sands were monitored for a period of approximately six months while undergoing MEOR treatment. SIP monitoring showed significant sensitivity to biodegradation induced changes. Increases in phase and imaginary conductivity, with a polarization peak centered on approximately 3–8 Hz, were observed for the two MEOR active columns. Similarly, the normalized chargeability, an integrated parameter of a Debye decomposition analysis of the spectra, showed a linear increase in time. Chromatographic methods confirmed oil biodegradation in the active columns. The SIP responses are likely the result of microbial processes and the changes they promote to oil properties, such as altering wettability, or possibly the effect of organic acid production. The results of this experiment indicate that SIP may be a viable method of monitoring MEOR processes.


2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Lewis R Brown

The ever increasing demand for oil, coupled with the reduction in reserves, is increasing emphasis on finding new oil deposits and recovering more oil from known reserves since half to two thirds of all of the oil discovered to date is still in the ground and not recoverable by present technology. There are, however, microbiological techniques that could be of value in extending the time before alternatives to oil as the major energy source are required. Two will be discussed here ? geomicrobiological prospecting and microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR).


Author(s):  
Jianlong Xiu ◽  
Tianyuan Wang ◽  
Ying Guo ◽  
Qingfeng Cui ◽  
Lixin Huang ◽  
...  

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