[Music]
ladies and gentlemen your world is
teeming with life
and especially microbial life everywhere
on earth we look we find them now I'm
sure you can all think of obvious places
where microbial life can occur
examples are the ocean delay close to
your home the soil in your garden and
everybody's skin but what about
unexpected places places where one would
not believe life to exist and yet it
does one of these places I would like to
discuss with you today namely oil fields
surprisingly microbial life flourishes
kilometers beneath our feet in the
deposits that hold the oil and gas that
we use to power our society yes microbes
even beat us at exploiting fossil fuels
taken out the energy it contains and
make a decent living I argue that there
is a lot we can learn from these
microbes that coal oil fields their home
and in fact they might be able to help
us make oil field operations just a
little cleaner because we globally
consume 67 million barrels of oil per
day four thousand Olympic swimming pools
each and every day now oil fields are
fascinating ecosystems and one could
call them extreme partly bellowing - an
older earth and that is what makes them
so fascinating - a petroleum
microbiologist like me but before we
dive into the world of oil field
microbes we first need to explore oil
fields themselves here you look from
Holland over the border into Germany and
you see those perm Jack's standing
around maybe a loss tank or two I guess
this is familiar to most but what now
lies underneath underneath you can find
a variety of things first a cap Rock an
impermeable Rock layer that is
containing
everything holding everything in place
underneath that there is a gas cap
because when the oil was formed over
geological times the lighter
hydrocarbons have moved up and the lower
ones has moved down so underneath the
gas cap then there is the oil face and
underneath that there is water lots of
it so called formation water and all of
that is based on source rock now all of
these liquids and gases are not
contained in some kind of gigantic
underground cavern no they are contained
in something called porous reservoir
rock and it looks a little bit similar
to this sponge and all those liquids are
contained in those tiny little pores and
see very high pressures due to
compressed gases oil fields are also
elevated in temperature between 50 and
90 degrees C and many of them are
saltier than the sea very important it
is to mention that oil fields are
depleted of oxygen fantastic lifestyle
don't you think but these microorganisms
make it so the fact that oxygen is
absent gives rise to different types of
microbiological breeding some
microorganisms can breed on sulfate for
example or iron or some can breed on co2
the stuff that we actually exhale now
when humans come along and drill into
the oil reservoir the oil starts to flow
out naturally due to the expansion of
the compressed gases it's a bit similar
to the coke bottle you drops on the
floor effect but when this when there is
enough liquid taken out and is flow
diminishes then what people do well they
pump in seawater to maintain that
pressure and keep producing the oil and
therefore oilfield water has two sources
one the formation water and two the sea
water that we pump in and a complex set
of tanks pipelines separators floatation
units filters when the oil is flowing to
the surface is now needed to separate
the water from that oil
not to mention the amount of chemical
treatment that goes in here now each of
these elements represents a unique
environment and holds its own microbial
inhabitants so what can we now expect
from these oilfield microbes well first
we must be honest and say that these
microbes can cause problems to the
oilfield operations one of these
problems is bio corrosion normal
chemical corrosion is a process that is
nothing more than rust formation when
oxygen is present and it is other words
slow burning of metal it happens
chemically all the time it's just too
slow for our eyes to see it
to prove this to you this is steel wool
a cleaning tool containing soap and very
thin threads of iron and if I loosen
that up a little bit the surface to
volume ratio to the iron is now so large
that the corrosion becomes burning and
we can actually see it happen now a
variety of microorganisms can harvest
this energy also when oxygen is not
present and this is what makes this
process very unpredictable this is a
hole in a pipeline caused by the effects
of microbes now when oil field engineers
design pipelines and tanks they
typically meant to last for 30 to 40
years but when it certain type of
microbial iron consuming organisms are
present they can speed up this chemical
process by a factor of 10 leading to
pipeline failures and leakages very
early on and all the associated problems
one might imagine another issue is the
formation of D hydrogen sulfide you know
that old egg in your closet that you
sawed off throw this away
that's the stuff what I'm talking about
when we introduce seawater into the
reservoir
we also introduce sulfate and a variety
of microorganisms can utilize this
sulfate together with the oil to make a
living but their by-product is the
smelly and toxic gas how bad is this now
actually well h2s is inherently toxic it
doesn't belong in our oxygenic
atmosphere
and each and every year several people
get injured due to h2s exposure on top
of that it is also highly corrosive
leading to bio corrosion as I shown
before and the oil industry is producing
now so much that it needs to be
converted to elemental sulphur which
nobody wants leading to these gigantic
mountains of sulphur scattered across
the world so by now you're beginning to
wonder okay this just sounds like one
huge issue to me how can you call this
now fascinating well because you might
be able to transform this microbial
challenge into an opportunity if we are
smart and in order to do this we need to
go back in time to the year 1934 where
to microbiologists mentioned everything
is everywhere but the environment
selects what did Beckingham biowing me
at that time they basically said every
microbe is everywhere but the
environment places restrictive
conditions upon itself allowing only a
few of these microorganisms to flourish
and become dominant and that when
conditions change new microorganisms are
now better suited for those
environmental conditions and will
flourish and become dominant at the
expense of others by using this old
principle we can that now turn that now
into an information source and we can
add to that what is selected tell
something about the environment and this
is especially convenient when an
environment is close to our eyes in case
of the tank or the pipe or is very
beneath our feet in case of the oil
field itself oil fields change all the
time temperature drops salinity changes
and first and foremost also the
chemicals that we apply but we cannot
see microbes so then what do we do well
we open up the molecular biology toolbox
and we peek into their genetic material
their DNA because a water sample is
easily obtained so we take a water
sample from all these environments and
send them to a lab and test them and the
information that comes back tells us
roughly who is there but also what their
activities might be
by using this as an information source
we can detect issues with h2s and
corrosion very early on but on top of
that as a bonus we also get information
about chemical performance and system
status how does this now look in
practice here we have an oil field which
is marine in nature the produced oil
water comes up and is sent to a
separator tank here the oil is floated
off by flotation and the water is being
Reproduction into the reservoir two
things happen in between these two tanks
at first the temperature is heated from
45 to 65 degrees and the water in order
to be re-injected needed to be made less
salty but how do we make water less
salty well they put in tap water but tap
water contains oxygen which is corrosive
which is what we do not want so a
chemical is added called sulfite to
scavenge that oxygen but the reaction
product of sulfite and oxygen is sulfate
this is the difference between these two
tanks if we now look at the microbial
environment in tank number one we see
that 50% of the microbial population
consists of a commensal organisms type
called Moreno vector you can also find
them you know in oil polluted marine
seawater but in the second tank where we
are adding the sulfide all of a sudden
40% of the microbial population consists
of a bacterial type called turbo diesel
Vibrio let's dissect that name ter mo
meaning it grows under warm conditions
they sulfur Vibrio meaning it's a
sulfide eater that forms sulfide which
is what we didn't want
and notice thereby that the microbial
population indeed is a reflection of the
environment and in this case we advised
to minimize the amount of ammonium
sulfide added so there is less of our
diesel for Vibrio friends around in
other cases oilfield owners have been
able to significantly optimized and read
therein reduce and optimize their
chemical spend have been able to reduce
the amount of interventions needed on
the oil field meaning systems shut down
because I'm sorry
operational issue and have also been
able to detect small leaks into their
system so as you can see there is stuff
that we can learn from these
microorganisms coal oil fields they're
home early on detection of issues and to
optimization of chemical performance and
thereby indeed make oilfield operations
just a little cleaner who knows what
other secrets they may hold for us thank
you so much
[Applause]