Molecular Methods for Assessing Microbial Corrosion and Souring Potential in Oilfield Operations

Abstract

Microorganisms are naturally present within crude oil and gas fields and associated processing infrastructure. While many microorganisms can be beneficial (such as in bioremediation applications), the activity of many oilfield associated microorganisms can be detrimental to many operations. In this chapter, we focus on microorganisms whose activities lead to oilfield souring and corrosion of oilfield infrastructure. In recent years, molecular microbiological methods (MMM) have been used to identify microorganisms found within oilfield systems in order to better understand, characterize, quantify, and mitigate detrimental processes. Here, we briefly overview the concepts of microbial souring and corrosion, describe considerations for processing field samples for MMM, overview various types of MMM, and highlight some examples of how MMM approaches have been used to better understand microbial souring and corrosion in different oilfield environments in order to help minimize these detrimental phenomena.