Enrichment of microbial consortia from crude oil phase

Based on the crude oil phase of the production producted fluid, four microbial consortia for MEOR were constructed and their environmental robustness were investigated. The results showed that crude oil produced from four different wells in the same reservoir had a unique microbial composition. Therefore, it is important to consider different oil wells when developing microbial resources. After continuous enrichment culture, four microbial consortia were obtained with different functional genera related to hydrocarbon degradation. In addition, enriched eG1614 and eP30 both exhibited robustness to successive perturbations of environmental factors. These results further suggested that the crude oil phase of produced fluids can serve as the seed bank for MEOR.