Abstract
SummaryThis roadmap examines the future of microbiology research and technology in fossil fuel energy recovery. Globally, the human population will be reliant on fossil fuels for energy and chemical feedstocks for at least the medium term. Microbiology is already important in many areas relevant to both upstream and downstream activities in the oil industry. However, the discipline has struggled for recognition in a world dominated by geophysicists and engineers despite widely known but still poorly understood microbially mediated processes e.g. reservoir biodegradation, reservoir souring and control, microbial enhanced oil recovery. The role of microbiology is even less understood in developing industries such as shale gas recovery by fracking or carbon capture by geological storage. In the future, innovative biotechnologies may offer new routes to reduced emissions pathways especially when applied to the vast unconventional heavy oil resources formed, paradoxically, from microbial activities in the geological past. However, despite this potential, recent low oil prices may make industry funding hard to come by and recruitment of microbiologists by the oil and gas industry may not be a high priority. With regards to public funded research and the imperative for cheap secure energy for economic growth in a growing world population, there are signs of inherent conflicts between policies aimed at a low carbon future using renewable technologies and policies which encourage technologies which maximize recovery from our conventional and unconventional fossil fuel assets.
Highlights
As we transition to a low carbon energy economy it is essential that we develop new approaches for harnessing the energy from fossil fuels with reduced environmental impact
In addition chemical flood approaches, such as polymer and surfactant floods designed to alter interfacial tension between oil and reservoir sediments enhancing oil sweep and recovery have being developed and are tested on a large scale (Shah et al, 2010). Thermal techniques such as in situ combustion or fire flooding, which generate lower emissions and use less water than more conventional thermal processes such as SAGD have been used to enhance the recovery of heavy oil (Shah et al, 2010) and curiously it has even been proposed that nuclear power could provide low emissions energy for electrically heating oil sands for enhanced oil recovery (Donnelly and Pendergast, 1999), for example, an option that would reduce emissions compared to SAGD
Microbially influenced corrosion (MIC) and souring may arise in shale gas production facilities, depending on the prevailing conditions, and it may yet prove feasible to manipulate the properties of shale gas formations through management of microbial activity
Summary
This roadmap examines the future of microbiology research and technology in fossil fuel energy recovery. Innovative biotechnologies may offer new routes to reduced emissions pathways especially when applied to the vast unconventional heavy oil resources formed, paradoxically, from microbial activities in the geological past. Despite this potential, recent low oil prices may make industry funding hard to come by and recruitment of microbiologists by the oil and gas industry may not be a high priority. With regards to public funded research and the imperative for cheap secure energy for economic growth in a growing world population, there are signs of inherent conflicts between policies aimed at a low carbon future using renewable technologies and policies which encourage technologies which maximize recovery from our conventional and unconventional fossil fuel assets
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