Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR): recent development and future perspectives

Abstract

After conventional oil recovery operations, more than half of the crude oil still remains in a form, which is difficult to extract. Therefore, exploring and developing new enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies have always been priority research in oilfield development. Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) is a promising tertiary oil recovery technology that has received widespread attention from the global oil industry in recent years due to its environmental friendliness, simplicity of operation, and cost-effectiveness. This review presents the: principle, characteristics, classification, recent development, and applications of MEOR technology. Based on hundreds of field trials conducted worldwide, the microbial strains, nutrient systems, and actual effects used in these technologies are summarized, with an emphasis on the achievements made in the development and application of MEOR in China in recent years. These technical classifications involve: microbial huff and puff recovery (MHPR), microbial flooding recovery (MFR), microbial selective plugging recovery (MSPR), and microbial wax removal and control (MWRC). Most of them have achieved good results, with a success rate of approximately 80%. These successful cases have accumulated into rich experiential indications for the popularization and application of MEOR technology, but there are still important yet uncertain factors that hinder the industrialization of this technology. Finally, based on the extensive research and development of MEOR by the authors, especially in both laboratory and industrial large scales, the main challenges and future perspectives of the industrial application for MEOR are presented.

Keywords:

• Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR)
• biosurfactants
• oil recovery mechanism
• laboratory experiments
• numerical simulation
• field trials

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21676215), the Key Research and Development Program of Shaanxi (Program No. 2022ZDLSF07-04), Xi’an Science and Technology Project (2022JH-RYFW-0114), Postgraduate Innovation, Practical Ability Training Plan of Xi’an Shiyou University (YCS22211005), and Shaanxi Engineering Research Center of Green Low-carbon Energy Materials and Processes.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21676215), the Key Research and Development Program of Shaanxi (Program No. 2022ZDLSF07-04), Xi’an Science and Technology Project (2022JH-RYFW-0114), Postgraduate Innovation, Practical Ability Training Plan of Xi’an Shiyou University (YCS22211005), and Shaanxi Engineering Research Center of Green Low-carbon Energy Materials and Processes.