Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR) is a valuable biotechnology in improving oil recovery by using the ability of microorganisms, either indigenous or injected, to in-situ produce useful oil-releasing products. Stimulation of indigenous microorganisms is one of the main trends in the development of MEOR in the waterflooded oil field. However, successful application of the MEOR technology has been remaining a challenge due to the problems how to control microbial populations in situ to produce useful metabolites with high efficiency. It is therefore necessary to conduct an extensive research on microbial ecology of oil reservoirs.
The objective of the funded project is to characterize the microbial communities in oil reservoir environments and evaluate the possible regulation for enhancing oil recovery. The project includes the following activities: (1). Determine the microbial composition and activity in waterflooded oil reservoirs by using both molecular and culture-based methods. (2). Isolate and identify the microorganisms which are useful in MEOR. And investigate the metabolic activity of isolated microorganisms and trophic relationships between the different metabolic groups for MEOR purposes. (3). Determine the ecological and physiological factors governing the metabolic diversity and rates of microbial processes. And evaluate the effects of microbial formulation on oil recovery efficiency.

After project completion, the knowledge gained is expected to extend current scientific and technical understanding of the diversity and metabolic capabilities of microbial communities in the oil reservoirs environment, especially those related to enhancing oil recovery, and to assist in developing a microbial process to improve the sweep efficiency of an oil recovery process using indigenous bacteria.