What are the concerns in the research on microbial enhanced oil recovery in oil and gas industry?

Question

What are the concerns in the research on microbial enhanced oil recovery in oil and gas industry?

Answer 1

Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR) is using microorganisms to retrieve additional oil from existing wells to enhance production.

However when using MEOR the following should be considered:

Environmental Conditions: Well env. conditions makes it difficult for the microorganisms to survive and even if they do, their productivity to us is greatly reduced.

Nutrients and oxygen is required

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other concerns varies on the bacteria selected

Anaerobic Bacteria

-they naturally degrade crude oil

-causes microbial corrosion and souring of oil due to increased hydrogen sulfide content from sulfate reducing bacteria

Aerobic Bacteria

- anaerobes, a by-product of aerobic bacteria results in reduced sulfur compounds

- degraded microorganisms tend to grow over time therefore metaboilizing the lighter components of oil

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The other concern I can think of is probably coming from the point of process used, as some processes can be expensive.

But honestly in the oil and gas industry a lot actually depends on the location and conditions at which one is operating. Somewhere in the North Sea might be totally different from the Norwegian region and which might be completely different from Africa etc. (hopefully you get the vibe)

Legislations and Regulations also come into play of which I know none for MEOR. But there might be some (I'm no expert)

There are lots of on going tests on MEORs http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=m...

Hope this helps