History
It was in 1926 when Beckam proposed the utilisation of microorganisms as agents for recovering the remnant oil entrapped in porous media. Since that time numerous investigations have been developed, and are extensively reviewed. In 1947, ZoBell and colleagues set the basis of petroleum microbiology applied to oil recovery, whose contribution would be useful for the first MEOR patent granted to Updegraff and colleagues in 1957 concerning the in situ production of oil recovery agents such as gases, acids, solvents and biosurfactants from microbial degradation of molasses. In 1954, the first field test was carried out in the Lisbon field in Arkansas, USA. During that time, Kuznetsov discovered the microbial gas production from oil. From this year and until the 1970s there was intensive research in USA, USSR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. The main type of field experiments developed in those countries consisted in injecting exogenous microbes. In 1958, selective plugging with microbial produced biomass was proposed by Heinningen and colleagues. The oil crisis of 1970 triggered a great interest in active MEOR research in more than 15 countries. From 1970 to 2000, basic MEOR research focused on microbial ecology and characterization of oil reservoirs. In 1983, Ivanov and colleagues developed the strata microbial activation technology. By 1990, MEOR achieved an interdisciplinary technology status. In 1995, a survey of MEOR projects (322) in the USA showed that 81% of the projects successfully increased oil production, and there was not a single case of reduced oil production. Today, MEOR is gaining attention owing to the high prices of oil and the imminent ending of this resource. As a result, several countries are willing to use MEOR in one third of their oil recovery programs by 2010.
Read more about this topic: Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery
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