Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) is a bio-technology that manipulates the function or structure, or both, of microbial environments present in the oil reservoirs. MEOR is proposed as a tertiary oil recovery technique due to its wide applicability, simplicity, and economic and environmental benefits. The microbial enhanced oil recovery market is on continuous rise due to increased spending on research and development, the increasing imports from aged/matured oil wells, and increased imports from major Asian countries, China and India. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. remained a net crude oil importer in 2020, importing nearly 5.88 million barrels per day (MMb/d) and exporting about 3.18 MMb/d.
However, some of the crude oil that the U.S. imports is refined by U.S. refineries into petroleum product, such as jet fuel, diesel fuel, heating oil, and gasoline, which the U.S. exports. Such activities are expected to accelerate the microbial enhanced oil recovery market growth. MEOR manipulates functional or structural changes in microbial environments (that exist within oil reservoirs) to boost productivity. Moreover, EOR increases oil production by almost 10 to 20%, from aged or mature oil fields. According to the Oil & Gas UK, a leading trade association for the United Kingdom offshore oil and gas industry, there are more than 1,800 mature oil wells in the Norwegian Continental Shelf and United Kingdom Continental Shelf (UKCS).
Thus, the microbial enhanced oil recovery market is expected to witness substantial growth in Europe, as well as in North America, as oil wells in the U.S. follow similar patterns. Moreover, according to the petrowiki.spe.org, there are more than 65,000 oil and gas basins and fields of all sizes in the world. Most of the world's largest oilfields are located in Russia, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, India, and Middle East. Furthermore, strict regulations regarding chemical extraction of oil is also expected to augment the growth of the microbial enhanced oil recovery market. However, microbial enhanced oil recovery is not effective when there are different temperatures within different layers of the oil field.
Furthermore, minimum legal regulations and low set-up costs are some of the factors that have increased the number of oilfields in countries, such as Saudi Arabia, India, China, and the U.S. This in turn is also expected to propel the microbial enhanced oil recovery market growth. The market growth, in the Asia Pacific, is mainly driven by the different oil-focused government initiatives. For instance, India and Titan Oil Recovery signed a strategic agreement with to provide organic oil recovery solutions to the Indian Oil Production Industry.
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