Squeezing oil from old wells.Oil fuels the lives of most people around the world. We use it to power our cars and planes, heat our homes, and even manufacture shoes, plastic bottles, and other products. Without it, the world would be a very different place. Oil can be pumped out of the ground only in certain places, however, and there's a limited supply. Now, scientists have found an unusual way to squeeze additional crude oil out of wells that were thought to be tapped out. They're using microbes to help extract the trapped oil. In the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. alone, about 380 billion barrels of oil lie buried bur·y tr.v. bur·ied, bur·y·ing, bur·ies 1. To place in the ground: bury a bone. 2. a. To place (a corpse) in a grave, a tomb, or the sea; inter. b. underground in places that are hard to get to--trapped inside porous porous /por·ous/ (por´us) penetrated by pores and open spaces. po·rous adj. 1. Full of or having pores. 2. Admitting the passage of gas or liquid through pores. rocks, for example, or stuck to grains of sand. Bacteria of a group known as Bacillus bacillus (bəsĭl`əs), any rod-shaped bacterium or, more particularly, a rod-shaped bacterium of the genus Bacillus. Some bacterium in the genus cause disease, for example B. make a waste product that works like a laundry detergent detergent (dētûr`jənt, dĭ–), substance that aids in the removal of dirt. Detergents act mainly on the oily films that trap dirt particles. . Adding such microbes to oil wells could release trapped oil in the same way that laundry detergent lifts stains This article is about the French commune. For the town in Surrey, England, see Staines. For other uses, see Stain (disambiguation). Stains is a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 11.6 km. (7.2 miles) from the center of Paris. out of clothing. To test the idea in the lab, researchers injected in·ject·ed adj. 1. Of or relating to a substance introduced into the body. 2. Of or relating to a blood vessel that is visibly distended with blood. injected 1. introduced by injection. 2. congested. a mixture of Bacillus bacteria and nutrients into a column of sand that also held oil. They found that, under the right conditions, the microbes unleashed up to 40 percent of the trapped oil. Next, the research team shut off the oil pumps at a site near the town of Oil Center, Okla. In two oil wells, they injected a solution of Bacillus bacteria along with nutrients for the bacteria to live on. In two other wells, they injected just nutrients. And, in a fifth well, they injected only water. The bacteria had 4 days to work their magic. Then, the scientists turned the pumps back on and collected liquid from each well. They found that microbes were still living in the microbe-injected wells. Living Bacillus turned up in none of the other wells. Oil flow also appeared to increase slightly in the microbe-treated well, but, because of pump problems, the researchers had trouble collecting enough data to be sure. In future studies, the researchers plan to measure oil production over a longer period of time in wells treated with microbes. After that, they'll try the technique in larger wells.--E. Sohn |
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