Page 303 - Fundamentals of Enhanced Oil and Gas Recovery

CHAPTER TEN

Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery:

Microbiology and Fundamentals

Afshin Tatar
Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

10.1 INTRODUCTION

The human population will increase to about 9.5 billion people by 2050 [1].
Per capita energy consumption is directly related to the standard of living, which is
desired to be ever-increasing. This is indicative of the inevitable increase in the global
energy demand [2]. The global demand for energy well result in 49% expansion by
2035 compared with 2007 [3]. Based on the US Energy Information Administration
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[4], the world energy consumption will increases from 575 quadrillion (575 3 10 )
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Btu in 2015 to 663 quadrillion (663 3 10 ) Btu by 2030 and then to 736
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(736 3 10 ) quadrillion Btu by 2040. Based on the same report [4], although con-
sumption of nonfossil fuels is expected to grow faster than fossil fuels (2.3 and 1.5%/
year for respective renewable and nuclear energy), fossil fuels will still account for 77%
of energy use in 2040. Transportation sector is the main energy consumer.
Contribution of nonpetroleum sources such as ethanol in spite of its increase will still
supply less than the 10% of the demand by 2030 [5]. Crude oil will be the most prob-
able energy source for transportation use in the close future [6].
In general, about 10% of the initial oil in place (IOIP) is recoverable through
primary production [7] and secondary recovery can promote the production to one-
thirds of the IOIP and still two-thirds is left on place [8]. In other words, a great
volume of oil remains unrecoverable after the convention technologies reach their
economic limit. For example the case for United States is 300 billion barrels [9].
Finding new oil fields cannot satisfy the increasing demand for the oil. Furthermore,
new exploration of new oil resources is becoming increasingly limited [10]. The best
solution is devising new methods to recover more oil from the existing oil fields
3
[11 14]. In the United States, it is estimated that nearly 17.5 m of oil has been lost
because of abandonment or plugging of stripper (marginal) wells in a 10-year period
between 1994 and 2003 [6]. In addition, increasing of the oil price and the future
lack of access to the easy supplies will make the tertiary methods more viable.

Fundamentals of Enhanced Oil and Gas Recovery from Conventional and Unconventional Reservoirs. © 2018 Elsevier Inc.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813027-8.00010-2 All rights reserved. 291