Since in 1952, Société Francaise des Petroles B. P. published the fundamental study of the production of petroleum protein, many researches on the use of petroleum hydrocarbons as fermentation materials instead of carbohychate materials have been done. In this point, the distance between petroleum and microbes has become shorter and shorter, and there are many reviews about this aspect. However, it appears that the microbial activities in other various aspects of petroleum industries has generally been missed except the above-mentioned petroleum fermentation.
In this paper, some primary knowledge of microbiology is presented as an introduction to the readers who are not familiar with it, and then microbiological problems in petroleum industries are discussed, petroleum prospecting, petroleum secondary recovery, petroleum reservoir plugging, decomposition of drilling fluid additives, corrosion of metals, petroleum waste disposal, and, microbial contamination and deterioration of petroleum.
The author expects that this present paper helps the engineers and researchers in petroleum industries to have a microbiological viewpoint.
View full abstract