Bio-based additives for production, and the microbial side of the corrosion and souring problems that come with them.
Microbiology enters oil and gas production from two directions. The first is deliberate: microbial and bio-based chemistry used to reduce viscosity, clean up a wellbore, unload liquid from a gas well, or restore injectivity after a polymer flood. The second is involuntary — sulphate-reducing bacteria that sour a reservoir and corrode steel, a problem the industry has to manage whether it wants to or not.
The two are connected. A bio-based programme that changes the microbial population in a reservoir or a surface system also changes the conditions for the organisms nobody invited, which is why monitoring belongs inside the programme rather than alongside it.
Articles here are written for production engineers and for the service companies and distributors who supply them. Every application starts as a screening question: permeability, salinity, temperature and the existing chemical programme decide whether a biological route applies at all — and the honest answer is sometimes that it does not.
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How rhamnolipid-type and sophorolipid biosurfactants lower interfacial tension for enhanced oil recovery, and what salt and temperature tolerance means for reservoir application.
Send us the site data and the target parameter. Our application engineers will confirm whether a biological route applies — including when the honest answer is that it does not.