TERI, a leader in the field of bioremediation of oil spill sites, has been providing such services to ONGC. To use bioremediation technology as well as other biotechnology solutions such as Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR) and Wax Deposition Prevention (WDP) on a large scale in oilfield installations, a joint venture “OTBL” was formed between TERI and ONGC. The share of ONGC in this partnership is 49.98% and that of TERI is 48.02%.
OTBL today is providing large-scale bioremediation solutions, by application of ‘OILZAPPER’ for cleaning up oil spills, undertaking MEOR and WDP/PDB jobs for the prevention of paraffin deposition in oil well tubing and surface flow lines, to oil companies in India and abroad, especially in the Middle East.
Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) have a prolific association in the field of microbial biotechnology since 1996. The persistent efforts put in by scientists in microbiology laboratories of both ONGC and TERI for finding ways for enhanced oil recovery resulted in promising collaborative research. A long success story of the collaboration between ONGC and TERI culminated in the formation of ONGC TERI Biotech Limited (OTBL) in 2. Thus, from laboratory scale to pilot to successful field application through OTBL—summarizes the progress of collaborative efforts of microbial-enhanced oil recovery between ONGC and TERI so far.
Technologies and services offered by the OTBL to oil and gas industries:
- OILZAPPER' (a microbial product to eliminate oil spill and manage oily sludge)
- Microbial-enhanced oil recovery
- Prevention of paraffin deposition in oil well tubing
- Prevention of wax deposition in surface flow line
- Control of sulfate reducing bacteria in water storage tanks and oil reservoirs
- Design of specific microbes to increase efficiency of ETPs.
- Flow assurance of paraffinic crude oil in oil pipelines
- Control of microbial induced corrosion in oil/water pipelines, storage tanks, cooling towers, etc.
- Provide XC Polymer as drilling mud chemical to oil & gas industry
- Provide biopolymer for water shut off jobs and fracturing of rocks
- Management and application of produced water by oil & gas industry
- Enhanced coal bed methane recovery from CBM wells
- Reduced viscosity of crude oil to increase sweeping efficiency of heavy crude oil from oil reservoir
