**Section 2**

**Environmental Management Through Bioremediation** 

Introduction to Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) 110 Processes and Bioremediation of Oil-Contaminated Sites

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Surguchev, L.M., Hanssen, J.E., Johannessen, H.M. and Sisk, C.D. "Modelling Injection

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**5** 

*Poland* 

**Microorganisms and Crude Oil** 

Crude oil is one of the most important energetic resources in the world. It is used as raw material in numerous industries, including the refinery-petrochemical industry, where crude oil is refined through various technological processes into consumer products such as gasoline, oils, paraffin oils, lubricants, asphalt, domestic fuel oil, vaseline, and polymers.

Although crude oil is a natural resource, in some conditions its presence is unfavorable and causes devastation of the surroundings. Crude oil and formation water in oil reservoirs represent an extreme environment with many groups of autochthonous microorganisms strictly linked with this setting. The relationship between microorganisms and this extreme environment begins when crude oil is formed and it ends when these specialized microorganisms are applied for the bioremediation of the polluted environment by crude oil

It is common knowledge that crude oil is formed by biological, chemical, and geochemical transformations of organic matter accumulated in favorable locations. In the first stage crude oil is transformed during sediment diagenesis at moderate temperatures up to 50C. Due to defunctionalization and condensation, kerogen, which is immature crude oil, is formed. Kerogen accumulations are considered to be the richest coal accumulation on Earth (Widdel & Rabus, 2001). Based on geochemical studies, immature crude oil contains higher volume of hydrocarbons with an odd number of carbon atoms, synthesized in plants. This fact has a practical meaning in determining the Carbon Preference Index (CPI). The organic origin of crude oil is also supplied by biomarkers, i.e. compounds whose carbon skeleton was not changed in geochemical processes, formed by living organisms, e.g. microorganisms. Such compounds include e.g. terpenes, porphyrines, and

The life activity of microorganisms occurring in crude oil has significant influence on its chemical composition and physical-chemical properties, and as a result often changes its economical value or exploitation conditions. This influence can be positive, e.g. decreased viscosity of heavy crude oil favors its exploitation, but also negative, e.g. corrosion of drilling equipment due to bacterial production of hydrogen sulphide. Products from the biological activity of autochthonous microorganisms or microorganisms introduced into the reservoir rock are the basis of biological methods applied to enhance the recovery of oil from already exploited (depleted) reservoirs. At specific conditions, crude oil may flow

Oil-derived products are also commonly used in many other chemical processes.

**1. Introduction** 

and oil-derived products.

metalloporphyrines (Surygała, 2001).

Dorota Wolicka and Andrzej Borkowski

*University of Warsaw* 
