Could Putting Bacteria In Oil Wells Turn Oil to Natural Gas While It's Still in the Well?
Natural Gas Power If we could sequester all that waste CO2 and pump it back into the ground with carbon eating bacteria that turn it into methane, we could take at least a small step toward curbing our net carbon emissions. Since untold quantities of oil started flowing into the Gulf, there's been a lot of talk about bacteria that eat oil. While those microbes might help remediate those millions of barrels of crude, one geoscientist thinks we might be able to use them to keep oil in the ground in the first place. By pumping such carbon-devouring, methane-producing bacteria into the oil wells or carbon sequestration sites, University of Calgary professor Steve Larter thinks we could biodegrade petroleum and waste CO2 into cleaner fuels like natural gas and hydrogen. The bacteria, yeasts, and other microbes Larter is talking about occur naturally in nature, and at sites where oil seeps from...