Abstract
Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the present knowledge of microorganisms that are detected in water produced from some oil wells. Several lines of evidence indicate the existence of an indigenous deep subsurface microbial community in petroleum reservoirs—(a) a large variety of prokaryotic groups have been isolated from produced waters around the world, (b) many of the isolates belong to unique species or genera that have not been recovered from any other habitats, and (c) highly similar microorganisms have been isolated from geographically remote oil fields. A wide range of chemolitoauthotrophic and organotrophic types have been isolated from deep oil wells such as hydrogenotrophic methanogens and sulfate-reducers, heterotrophic methanogens, fermentative bacteria and Archaea, heterotrophic sulfate-reducers, iron-reducing microbes, and saprophytes. This enormous physiological diversity suggests that this microbial community constitutes a complex ecosystem with an active biogeochemical cycling of carbon and minerals.
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