Crude oil will remain an important source of energy for a long time, however, the production of conventional crude oil (light oil) will eventually peak and enter into decline. Thus, to satisfy future oil demand, exploration and recovery will increasingly focus on heavy oils, tar sand and bitumen. The world reserves of heavy oils accounts for more than double of the resources of conventional oil. Heavy oils are highly viscous and thus difficult to move through porous media, this makes heavy oil reservoirs more difficult to produce than conventional oil reservoirs. Improved oil production methods in heavy oil repositories will have considerable economic benefits. The use of biotechnological processes alone or in combination with other recovery processes represents interesting possibilities for development of new methods for recovery and upgrading of heavy oils.

The department of Biotechnology at SINTEF Materials and Chemistry has long experience within several fields of crude oil and hydrocarbon microbiology. This includes estimation of in situ degradation rates in pristine and oil polluted areas, the isolation and use of crude oil emulsifying bacteria, the study of alkane degradation, and the use of enzyme evolution to extend/increase enzyme specificity (e.g. PAH-dioxygenases).

Currently, we, together with Statoil and Department of Marine Environmental Technology at SINTEF Materials and Chemistry, focus on improved recovery and upgrading of heavy oils by biocatalytical processes. We are also involved in a Research Council project aimed at the construction and use of metagenome libraries to characterize oil reservoirs. This project is in collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and Statoil.

The practical work includes isolation of microorganisms with possible application in biocatalytical processes related to the oil industry, genetic engineering, advanced analysis and high throughput screening. Our infrastructure and laboratories are well suited for this work and includes a fully equipped anaerobic laboratory, fermentation laboratory,  screening/automatization laboratory and an analytical laboratory.