The
enhanced production of unconventional hydrocarbons, the mitigation of
biosourcing, and the advancement of carbon capture and storage, now combine to
create significant financial and technical challenges to the global oil and gas
industry. Emerging
and especially promising Geobiology approaches
to these issues include utilization of the physical and biogeochemical activity
of microorganisms that inhabit deeply buried hydrocarbon reservoirs.
The enhanced production of
unconventional hydrocarbons, the mitigation of biosourcing, and the advancement
of carbon capture and storage, now combine to create significant financial and
technical challenges to the global oil and gas industry. Emerging and
especially promising Geobiology approaches
to these issues include utilization of the physical and biogeochemical activity
of microorganisms that inhabit deeply buried hydrocarbon reservoirs.
We will evaluate
the most recent advances in:
- extracting microbes from core and subsurface
fluids;
- determining the biodiversity and metabolic activity of the deep microbial
biosphere using genome-enabled molecular techniques;
- determining
biogeochemical capabilities from enrichment cultures of subsurface
microorganisms;
- tracking microbe-water-rock-oil interactions in real-time using
advanced experimental microfluidics;
- quantitatively linking reservoir sedimentology,
stratigraphy, mineralogy, and burial and migration history with the molecular
and biogeochemical microbiology analyses; and (6) establishing a theoretical
and practical framework for future field-scale strategies.