Beyond Traditional Methods: Exploring Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery
In the past years, oil and gas companies sought means to increase production efficiently to address concerns about depleting natural reserves, rising world energy demand, and fluctuating oil prices. In order to optimize production from mature oil and gas fields, Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) emerged as a method to extract additional oil from reservoirs after conventional recovery methods, such as natural pressure and water flooding, become less effective. Typically, primary and secondary recovery techniques leave behind a significant portion of the oil in the reservoir; up to 50-70%. EOR was developed to tackle this challenge, improving oil recovery rates and extending the life of reservoirs.