The science behind the use of microbes to enhance oil recovery has advanced significantly, but it suffers from old associations.
After decades of trial and error, those working on microbial enhanced oil recovery have identified the “oil-eating” bacteria that laboratory tests suggest can change the properties in an oil reservoir, and know better how to put them to work. The increasing knowledge of the role microbial life plays in oil and gas reservoirs has also led to new approaches for controlling corrosion, managing bacterially produced hydrogen sulfide, and creating natural gas from coal.
(In this story, “eat” is used to describe the metabolic processes of bacteria. For instance, oil eating is more precisely hydrocarbon oxidizing.)
But the greatest potential payoff and the most debate come from the idea of microbes for enhanced oil recovery (MEOR). “There is a much greater understanding of what microbiology is doing in a reservoir” and how that can be used to produce more oil, said Stuart Page, chief executive officer of Glori Energy, a company that has staked its future of convincing the industry that microbes can be used to recover more oil.
MEOR is still often associated with promoters promising better oil production by dumping molasses into oil wells. “From a historical point of view, it is seen as snake oil,” Page said.
The image is darker than the history, which has been more hit and miss. For those in small companies, such as Glori, and big ones, such as Statoil, the challenge has been convincing experts in the field that promoting bacterial growth can be a consistent and effective way to produce more oil.
Work on using microbes to find oil goes back further than seismic imaging and the history of MEOR goes back more than 50 years.
Claude ZoBell, the scientist hired by the American Petroleum Institute who first discovered the microbiological ori-gins of oil, patented his MEOR concept in 1957. His approach involved introducing high-performing bacteria into a reservoir. It is one of many that has been tried and failed as people slowly came to better understand the exotic life in reservoirs.
