Innovation Alberta: Article Details

Program Item Details

TITLE: Dr. Steven Larter, Professor, Geology and Geophysics, and Canada Research Chair in Petroleum Geology, University of Calgary and Alberta Ingenuity Fund Scholar

SUBJECT: #139 Microbes: Revolutionizing Oil Sands Production

SYNOPSIS: Next time you think about the tar sands, just think bugs. It’s microbes that made crud out of Alberta’s crude and gave us the tar sands. With the help of the Alberta Ingenuity Fund, two researchers at the University of Calgary are trying to unlock the secrets of those oil-eating microbes.

AUDIO: Download Audio (mp3 format)

TRANSCRIPT:

Interview starts at 1:11

Intro: The brave new world of oil production just may rest with some tiny little bacteria that eat oil. Who needs giant refineries and mines at Fort McMurray when one day soon, we might simply slip a large bowl into the earth and have those microbes chow down. The scientist working towards this energy revolution is Dr. Steven Larter. Steve has just moved from Newcastle to the University of Calgary where he will hold a Canada Research Chair in petroleum geology. He is also a new Alberta Ingenuity Scholar.

Dr. Steve Larter

SL: Yes I’ve just moved from the University of the Newcastle in the UK where we had a very large group looking at processes of alteration of crude oil by micro-organisms. So I’ve moved now with five other members of the group. And Canada is the world capital of biodegraded oil, really. And so we came here to be in the oil patch and really be where one of the largest accumulations of oil on the planet is that’s been formed by the microbial alteration of cruce oil.

CC: WHAT WOULD THAT BE?

SL: Microbial alteration of crude oil is a set of processes whereby micro-organisms – bacteria – and another group of organisms called “archea” which kind of look like bacteria but are physiologically quite different, alter oil and gas in sub-surface reservoirs to make materials like heavy oil or the bitumen in the tar sands. And often they also make methane or other by-products of this process. Most of the world’s oil has been altered in this way. And most of the world’s oil is in fact heavy oil, much of it being in Canada and Venezuela.

CC: ONE OF THE BIG PROBLEMS WE HAVE IS TRYING TO GET THE STUFF OUT OF THE GROUND AND GET IT INTO A FORM THAT CAN BE USED. WHY DO WE HAVE SO MANY PROBLEMS WITH THAT?

SL: Well what microorganism do is consume mainly the hydrocarbons in the oil and they leave a heavy intractable residue that’s acidic. It’s very viscous. It doesn’t flow very easily through pipes and so it’s not easy to produce. You’ve got to add steam, to heat it basically with steam, to lower the viscosity, make it more fluid and runny. Or you’ve got to mine it as they do up in Fort McMurray. And so this alteration process takes nice flowing oil and turns it into heavy viscous crud basically.

CC: WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON THAT WOULD HELP CHANGE THAT OR TAKE US INTO THE FUTURE?

We ve been doing several different things. Most of our research has been funded to NOT find heavy oil. It’s actually been paid for by major oil companies to understand processes by which heavy oil is formed so they can avoid finding it in areas like offshore Brazil or the Gulf of Mexico or West Africa. But in the process of trying to understand how the material forms, you understand perhaps potential routes how the microbial processes could benefit the recovery of heavy oils and even conventional oils in general.

And one of the things we’ve learned, in fact, one of the major processes is that micro-organisms react oil with water, H2O, and one of the major by-products is methane. They not only make heavy oil, but they also make methane. So one exciting idea is if natural processes could be accelerated by many thousands of times, whether you can actually recover some of these deposits not as oil but as natural gas. So one of the areas we’re kind of looking at.

CC: HOW WOULD WE USE THAT METHANE OR MOVE IT AROUND?

SL: Well, obviously methane is easier to move around in a pipeline. It doesn’t really need to be refined. You just need to clean it up a little bit. You can just move it in the natural gas pipeline system. I’ve only been here 6 weeks, but I see Canada has a pretty effective natural gas pipeline system in place already.

CC: HOW MUCH ARE WE ACTUALLY RECOVERING AT THIS TIME OF THE HEAVY OIL?

SL: I believe that perhaps as little as 7 to 10 percent of the total heavy oil reserve that’s in Alberta, which I’ve seen estimates as high as 3 trillion barrels. That’s 4 times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia basically, so a colossal amount., But perhaps on 7 to 10 percent of this can be recovered using the kind of mining and steam (SAGD) injection techniques that are currently being used. So a tiny fraction. But the resource is so enormous, that even 1 percent of this resource would be substantial. I think 1 percent of the Alberta tar sands is equivalent to the total recoverable reserves of the North Sea, for example. So even a small difference is a huge, huge amount of oil.

CC: WHAT DO YOU SEE COMING AHEAD IF WE MOVE INTO THIS AREA OF USING MICROBES MORE?

SL: Well I think micro-organisms have been used in oil recovery for many, many years. I think the idea of actually them to produce methane, for example, that’s a relatively new idea. And I think it’s a very exciting development, because not only can it potentially help us recover some of the tar sands and heavy oils, it can also be used to get at that 50 percent of regular oil, if you like, what we call conventional oil, that’s left in most oil reservoirs. So it’s estimated that something like 95 percent of all future oil production will come from already discovered oil fields. And all the oil fields that are already been discovered, we leave half the oil in the ground. So we’ve got these two enormous targets we can go after. One is the tar sands, colossal amount of oil, and the other is, the half, the conventional oil that’s already been discovered that remains in the ground. And micro-organism can potentially recover both these materials.

But we’re not only looking at micro-organisms to try and recover the oil sands. We’re also looking at chemical techniques to recover these materials. And I things it’s important to remember, in essence, that we don’t really want oil and gas. We want energy. We want electricity and chemical feed stocks from these reservoirs. Because if we can actually leave much of the carbon in the reservoir, obviously that has environmental benefits as well, too.

So we’re working together with colleagues in geophysics, chemical engineering, in other parts of the university to develop, to look at really, the next generation set of techniques, beyond the mining and the steam flooding that can potentially recover Alberta’s energy in a much more environmentally friendly and feasible manner.

CC: WHAT MIGHT SOME OF THOSE METHODS BE? WILL WE ALWAYS BE TIED TO HAVING TO TAKE THE STUFF OUT THE GORUND AND REFINE IT? OR ARE THERE OTHER WAYS?

SL: Well ideally we’d like to build a refinery in the ground. Like in-situ recovery where we do all the upgrading and messy stuff in the ground. We leave as much of the carbon in the ground as we can and recover high value products like natural gas and very light oils directly from the reservoir. So we’re looking at schemes where we build effectively big pots in the reservoir, where we inject catalysts, where we use geophysics and other techniques to monitor reactions that are going on in place. Essentially a sort of in-situ refinery really, a refinery in a reservoir.

CC: HOW FAR IN THE FUTURE DO YOU THINK WE WOULD SEE SOME OF THIS STUFF BEING PUT INTO PRACTICE?

SL: I think it’s quite likely in the next five years we can see some of the early stages already in the department here people are using geophysics, for example, to monitor heavy oil recovery. Already we’re using geo-chemistry to understand where the best parts of the heavy oil fields are to produce. So we’re already on the start of this curve. And I think very quickly, within five years, I hope there would be some impact on types of production that are occurring now – the steam flooding operations and so-called cull production. I think that could be impacted within 5 years.

I think these biological recovery, in-situ reactor types of things, you’re looking at a decade away, something like that. But I think it will happen quite quickly. And with the oil price high, 40 dollars a barrel and I think unlikely to come down now, suddenly there’s going to be a huge impetus from the oil industry to actually invest in these next generation, develop these next generation technologies, to try and recover this huge resource. So I’m fairly optimistic that within my career lifetime, if you like, we’ll see some of our work having some impact on these new types of processes.

CC: THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

SL: You’re welcome.

Dr. Steven Larter holds a Canada Research Chair in Petroleum Geology at the University of Calgary. He is also a new Alberta Ingenuity Scholar and is one of the researchers involved in the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy at the U of C.