Ferrets in the Oilfields

Bacteria found in deep sea mud might soon make oil wells as buggy as vinegar works. Last week Dr. Claude E. ZoBell, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif., announced that he was well along on a process to infect exhausted oilsands with these bacteria.

Snuffling underground like fierce micro scopic ferrets, they would chase residual oil toward waiting wells.

Dr. ZoBell has busied himself for years with the microflora of oil strata, including sea-bottom muds where oil is thought to be formed. His original idea was to study how bacteria modify crude oil (TIME, Dec. 17, 1945). But in 1943, he found in sea mud a comma-shaped bacterium which he named (he was only 38 at the time, and feeling in the pink) desulphovibrio halo-hydrocarbonoclasticus. He put it in a test tube filled with material to simulate a limestone oilsand. Four days later, oil bubbled out of the test tube's mouth. A little later, all the oil in the sand was gone.

By sheer multiplication, the bacteria push oil particles off the grains of oilsand. They dissolve limestone, making the formation more porous. They generate carbon dioxide, which pushes oil particles ahead of it by gas pressure. The bacteria also produce a "detergent" (soaplike substance) which makes clinging oil films gather into free globules.

To the Last Drop. At first Dr. ZoBell did not think much of his find, but oilmen heard about it and jumped at it eagerly. Their interest was based on a sad and simple fact: no known extraction process gets all the oil out of an oilfield. Much of it stays below ground, sticking to rock particles. But if the bacterial process works, this oil can be got at, and exhausted oil pools will yield a valuable "second crop."

For two years, the Pennsylvania Grade Crude Oil Association has been experimenting (more or less in secret) with the practical application of Dr. ZoBell's discovery. At present many Pennsylvania oilmen glean their underground fields by forcing water through worked-out strata. They plan to introduce Dr. ZoBell's bacteria along with the water. The bacteria should hunt out and bring to the surface the last drops of oil.

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