Microbes exist virtually everywhere and affect all aspects of our lives.  Taxon’s ability to understand how microbial communities function can therefore lead to important solutions to diverse problems.  Taxon’s four programmatic areas of focus are described here.

Heavy Oil – In contrast to light, sweet crude oil which is becoming harder to find, heavy oil remains quite abundant.  Huge accumulations exist in Alberta, Canada and Venezuela that each could supply the U.S.’s entire energy needs for over a century.  The extraction and production of heavy oil requires steam injections to overcome its inherent viscosity through a process termed steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD).  Large amounts of energy and money are consumed generating the steam needed for this process.  Reducing the environmental impact of producing these resources is critical to fully realizing the potential of heavy oil.

Taxon is developing consortia of microbes that are able to reduce the molecular weight and viscosity of specific components within heavy oil.  The goal of this project is to reduce, or even eliminate, the need for steam in heavy oil projects.  These tools will significantly reduce the cost and environmental footprint of utilizing this important energy resource.

Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR) – Conventional oil extraction processes recover less than half of the oil present in subsurface reservoirs.  Additional measures are necessary to recover more of the remaining oil through secondary and tertiary oil recovery processes.  These activities include steam injections, water flooding and the use of chemicals such as polymers and surfactants to aid in recovery.  The injection of microbes or nutrients to stimulate endemic microbes is a strategy that has been deployed successfully for over a decade. 

Taxon is applying genomics technologies and high-throughput screening of its in-house strain collections to turbo charge this proven approach of enhanced oil recovery.  New microbes with enhanced properties to recover residual oil are currently in development.  These discoveries offer the promise of converting non-economical oilfields into economical resources and extending the life of mature oilfields.

Biogenic Gas (Coal-to-methane conversion) – At least half of all the natural gas commercially produced is derived from the action of microbes in the subsurface.  Methane (natural gas) is the end product of microbial metabolism of complex carbon sources in anaerobic environments.  Coal is a super-abundant carbon resource in the subsurface that readily serves as a food source for microbes in the methanogenic conversion into methane.  A recent strategy being developed in the natural gas industry is to consider these subsurface coal seams together with the native microbial communities associated with the coal as a natural gas producing bioreactor that if maintained properly, could produce natural gas for decades rather than the few-year normal life expectancy of a conventional gas well.

Taxon has characterized the microbial communities from hundreds of subsurface coal seams and maintains an extensive molecular database comprised of 16S rRNA gene sequences from over 2 million distinct species of microbes that inhabit oil and gas reservoirs.  Utilizing this information, together with it’s anaerobic strain collection, Taxon recently performed a lab-scale validation of its first synthetic consortium of microbes that can increase rates of coal-to-methane conversion.  Field-trial tests of this synthetic consortium are in the planning stages and are anticipated in 2012.

Surface Geochemistry – The presence of organic (oil/gas/coal) and inorganic (minerals) resources in the environment often give tell-tale signs of their presence in the form of changes in the local geochemistry.  These geochemical ‘signatures’ leave an imprint on the resident microbial communities as a result of the microbes’ adaptation to exist in a particular location.  Therefore, the patterns that exist within microbial community structure, once understood, can serve as the basis to identify the presence of resources.  Taxon has focused on developing genomics and bioinformatics tools to detect these patterns within microbial communities.

Oil and gas reservoirs are usually located between one and three miles below the surface.  Low-molecular-weight compounds such as methane, ethane and propane typically leak out of the structures that contain these hydrocarbon accumulations.  These gases seep vertically and create a low concentration plume on the surface.  Specific microbes within near surface soil microbial communities have adapted to utilize these compounds as energy and carbon sources.  Taxon has developed specific assays for hundreds of propane-utilizing microbes and offers these tools as a service for oil and gas exploration programs.  To learn more Click Here

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