The Growth and Dissemination of BEOR (Biological Enhanced Oil Recovery) and its Associated Technologies (original) (raw)

2006

Abstract

Technologies which employ biostimulation and bioaugmentation processes are amply utilized for the treatment of effluents and organic wastes, in the bioremediation of areas contaminated with oily residues, and in numerous other industrial applications, including in the oil industry. These technologies are well developed, and today there is sufficient scientific basis to suggest their use in the stimulation of oil production, especially from mature fields, in wells with high viscosity oil, and in reservoirs with low permeability or other flow problems. The traditional methods of stimulating production, involving the injection of water, steam, gas or other products, have established the conceptual basis for new methods of extraction of oil from the reservoir matrix. Increasingly, these techniques seek to take advantage of effects which occur at the molecular level, and which induce modifications in the structure of the reservoir matrix or in the oil itself, in order to ease its flow and consequent production. These molecular scale effects, propagated to a scale encompassing entire fields, are the very same effects which occur in biostimulation and bioaugmentation processes, which, through the action of microorganisms, can induce solubilization or transformation of certain compounds, the formation of bioflocs, or other physical effects in the oil or the reservoir matrix. Based on the known biological processes employed industrially, it is easy to imagine that minor adaptations can result in great benefits, when applied in EOR (enhanced oil recovery) applications, for the stimulation of oil production. Given the enormous economic dimension of the oil industry, any technology which can find application in any of its productive aspects creates the expectation of large technical, economic and strategic benefits. This possibility has, in fact, been tested by some promising studies and research projects, which point to the need for more aggressive efforts in order to better study the potential and the ways in which biological methods may be applied to EOR. The advent of MEOR (microbial enhanced oil recovery) and BEOR (biological enhanced oil recovery) technologies represents the dawn of a new era in the stimulation of production from mature fields and wells with low returns, and even in the stimulation of production from certain new productive areas. The strategic importance of these advances has turned BEOR into a leading theme in the petroleum world.

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