Laboratory Testing of a Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery Process Under Anaerobic Conditions

Abstract Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) is a potentially attractive way to recover additional or incremental oil from a reservoir beyond conventional operations. The objective of this work was to determine the effectiveness of a commercial MEOR iystem in controlled laboratory corefloods. The experiments were carried out as support for a field test conducted in the Shannon Formation of the Teapot Dome reservoir. Two sets of coreflood experiments were designed in order to carry out this research. The first set was designed to determine the incremental oil production of each of the components of the MEOR system, both individually and in all possible combinations. The second set of experiments attempted to maximize the opportunity for incremental oil production to occur. The results indicate that, under the conditions tested, there was no incremental increase in oil recovery as a result of the MEOR system.