Unconventional oils mainly heavy oils, extra heavy oils and bitumens represent a significant share of the total oil world reserves. Oil companies have expressed interest in unconventional oil as alternative resources for the energy supply. These resources are composed usually of viscous oils and, for this reason, their use requires additional efforts to guarantee the viability of the oil recove...

We imaged an oil-wet sandstone at residual oil saturation (S(or)) conditions using X-ray micro-tomography with a nominal voxel size of (9 μm)(3) and monochromatic light from a synchrotron source. The sandstone was rendered oil-wet by ageing with a North Sea crude oil to represent a typical wettability encountered in hydrocarbon reservoirs. We measured a significantly lower S(or) for the oil-wet...

Planktonic copepods play a key function in marine ecosystems, however, little is known about the effects of dispersants and chemically dispersed crude oil on these important planktonic organisms. We examined the potential for the copepods Acartia tonsa, Temora turbinata and Parvocalanus crassirostris to ingest crude oil droplets and determined the acute toxicity of the dispersant Corexit(®) 950...

Saprolegniaceae are ubiquitous filamentous water molds. They occur as saprotrophs or parasitic on aquatic and terrestial plants and on aquatic animals, and a number of interesting fungi belonging to the Saprolegniaceae have been isolated from the soil. In the course of an investigation of the water molds in Argentina, an unusual species of Achlya was isolated once from soil collections. Brassic...

Sarvak Formation as the oil reservoir with the most hydrocarbon potential in Yaran oil field is of special importance. The present research was conducted to study the reservoir parameters of this Formation. For this purpose, petro-physical crude data was first prepared and using the Geolog6.7 software, a petro physical plot was drawn. Afterward, petro-physical properties of reservoir were done ...

The drilling time data of gas logging are used to calculate drilling time ratio of the reservoir, and the total hydrocarbon data are used to calculate hydrocarbon contrast coefficient and to establish the drilling time ratio--hydrocarbon contrast coefficient crossplot. The standards of distinguishing the boundaries of hydrocarbon zones, hydrocarbonaceous water layers and dry layers are determin...

Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR) is potentially useful to increment oil recovery from a reservoir beyond primary and secondary recovery operations using microorganisms and their metabolites. Stimulation of bacterial growth for biosurfactant production and degradation of heavy oil fractions by indigenous microorganisms can enhance the fluidity and reduce the capillary forces that retain th...

Rhizoremediation involves the use of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) to remove organic pollutants from terrestrial environment. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of rhizoremediation through inoculation of hydrocarbon degrading bacterial strains with and without nutrients in the rhizosphere sporadically become contaminated with oily sludge. Bacterial str...

The BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster was the most catastrophic offshore oil spill in U.S. history, yet we still have a poor understanding of how organisms could evolve in response to the toxic effects of crude oil. This study offers a rare analysis of how fitness-related traits could evolve rapidly in response to crude oil toxicity. We examined evolutionary responses of populations of the comm...

Two bacterial strains identified as Ralstonia picketti (BP 20) and Alcaligenes piechaudii (CZOR L-1B) were isolated from petroleum hydrocarbon-contaminated soil following bioremediation treatment. The surface active properties, e.g. surface tension, emulsification and foamability of their culture filtrates were evaluated. Bacterial cell-surface hydrophobicity (BAH) as measured by analyzing cell...