(June 11, 2015) Researchers
are sending a soil bacterium into alien waters. They are examining whether the
microbe can seal up the right places in oil reservoirs all by itself.
If the bacterium can do this by ‘selective plugging’ down in
the sandstone beds below the North Sea, existing oil reservoirs can be
exploited more effectively.
Senior researcher Gunhild Bødtker and her colleagues at Uni
Research CIPR are the first to examine whether this method of microbially
enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) can work in the North Sea.