RESERVOIR SOURING: MECHANISMS
AND PREVENTION
Ian Vance and David R. Thrasher
7
Reservoir souring is an example of a process
that is initiated at the microbiological level, yet
exerts an effect over an entire reservoir and its
produced fluids within the production lifetime
of a field. The overall economic impact of
microbial reservoir souring can be very sig-
nificant, yet there are few technologies aimed
at preventing the initiation of reservoir sour-
ing, and these have shown limited success.
Treating the symptoms of souring by shutting
in the wells most affected or by sweetening the
sour gas has been the standard industry re-
sponse. Attempts to prevent the initiation of
souring have relied mainly upon treating in-
jected water with biocidal agents. Recently,
technologies based upon principles of micro-
bial ecology have been applied with apparent
success.
SYMPTOMS OF SOURING
Reservoir souring is characterized by an in-
creasing concentration of hydrogen sulfide
(H2S) in production gas, typically after the
initiation of secondary recovery by water in-
jection and some time after the breakthrough
Ian Vance, Centromere Limited, The Hollies, Dungells Ln.,
Yateley, Hampshire GU46 6EY, United Kingdom. David R.
Thrasher, BP plc, Chertsey Rd., Sunbury on Thames,
Middlesex TW16 7LN, United Kingdom.
Petroleum Microbiology, Edited by Bernard Ollivier and Michel Magot,
# 2005 ASM Press, Washington, D.C.
123
of injected water at the producing wells. Dual-
porosity reservoir systems could potentially
result in breakthrough of H2S at production
wells prior to injection water breakthrough,
although this is not commonly reported. Later
sections of this chapter show that the appear-
ance of H2S at production wells is, in fact, the
last in a chain of events that may take several
years to complete. During the production life-
time of a field, changes in the gas/oil ratio
(GOR) and water rate/total liquid rate ratio
(water cut) may result in apparent souring. In
these cases, no additional H2S is formed, but
changes in the relative masses of produced
water (in which most of the H2S is dissolved)
and the production gas (into which most of
the H2S partitions) result in a higher con-
centration appearing in the gas phase, as
shown in Fig. 1. Concentrations of gas-phase
H2S as high as several thousand parts per
million per volume (ppmv) have been re-
corded in individual wells in reservoirs that are
actively souring and in those where existing
H2S is merely being redistributed between
phases. Across a souring field, significant
masses of H2S can be generated. The Skjøld
field in the Danish sector of the North Sea, for
example, produced 1.15 tonnes of H2S per
day with maximum wellhead concentrations
of 1,000 ppmv (Larsen, 2002). Maximum
124 & VANCE AND THRASHER

FIGURE 1 Example of apparent souring of sweet reservoir oil and associated gas as a result of increasing
cut of sour water containing 16.6 ppmw H2S and a constant GOR of 220 scf/stb. No additional H2S has
been generated; only the relative proportions of sour water, sweet gas, and sweet oil have changed.

concentrations of H2S in gas as high as 40,000
ppmv have been recorded in the Huntington
Beach field in California (Khatib and Salani-
tro, 1997).
ECONOMIC IMPACT
Sour service metallurgy should be used to
protect against sulfide stress-cracking corro-
sion in facilities where the partial pressure of
H2S exceeds certain threshold levels, as de-
fined by the guidelines of NACE Interna-
tional standards under MR0175/ISO-15156.
From a survey of 12 reservoirs (Khatib and
Salanitro, 1997), it was concluded that in all
cases where the injection water contained sul-
fate, souring to some degree resulted; there-
fore, all new seawater flood projects should be
designed for sour service. There is a cost pre-
mium, estimated to be 2% of the total project
cost, for sour service metallurgy (Al-Rasheedi
et al., 1999) that could become up to an order
of magnitude more significant and expensive,
should retrofitting become necessary. On a $1
billion project, metallurgy upgrades would
cost in the region of $20 million at the outset
of the project but up to $200 million if ret-
rofitted after initial design and construction
had commenced. Khatib and Salanitro (1997)
estimate that using sour service materials could
add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the
cost of each well, resulting in millions of
dollars of added costs to an entire project.
Similarly, it is common for oil and gas ex-
port lines to have a maximum allowable con-
centration of H2S that is calculated to maintain
structural integrity. If the H2S concentration
cannot be controlled below this critical con-
centration, the export of fluids would be
curtailed with subsequent loss of revenue.
A characteristic of reservoir souring is that
not all production wells show the same in-
creases in H2S concentration at the same time.
If the aim is to lower the concentration of field
gas H2S to below a critical value, it may be
possible to accomplish this by selectively
shutting in the wells producing the greatest
mass of H2S (Al-Rasheedi et al., 1999). This
obviously incurs a cost in terms of lost or
 7. RESERVOIR SOURING: MECHANISMS AND PREVENTION
deferred production, although in practice,
these wells tend to have high water cuts, which
limit the financial penalty.
Sour facilities entail additional costs in
preventing operator exposure to toxic H2S;
control of oil-wet, iron sulfide pads that re-
duce separator performance; management of
iron sulfide solids that interfere with produced
water cleanup; and accumulation of iron-
sulfide-based solids that may promote under-
deposit corrosion and foul equipment such as
pump strainers. Chemical scavenger treat-
ments that remove H2S from the production
gas may also impose significant financial costs;
owing to the volumes that must be transported
and stored offshore, these treatments may have
significant logistical implications. Similarly,
batch biocide treatments of water injection
systems designed to control reservoir souring
require frequent, high-dose applications with
cost implications (Larsen et al., 2000).
Continuous treatment of injected seawater
with a nitrate salt, a relatively recent technique
in the oil industry, costs around $0.76 to $1.19
per kg of sulfide removed ( Jenneman et al.,
1997). Additional facilities such as nanofiltra-
tion units, proposed to control souring by re-
moval of sulfate from injected seawater (Rizk
et al., 1998), have a significant capital cost.
MECHANISMS
There have been several biotic and abiotic
mechanisms proposed for reservoir souring,
such as thermochemical sulfate reduction and
pyrite dissolution. These have been discussed
by others (Herbert, 1987; Eden et al., 1993;
Khatib and Salanitro, 1997). It is now widely
accepted that the reduction of sulfate by sulfate-
reducing bacteria (SRB) is the most significant
mechanism of H2S production in reservoir
souring as a result of waterflooding (Ligthelm
et al., 1991; Sunde et al., 1993). The injection
of seawater or other water containing sulfate,
with an indigenous population of viable SRB,
is a common practice used to increase oil
recovery beyond primary production by
maintaining reservoir pressure and sweeping
oil towards production wells. For reasons of
& 125
corrosion control, steps are taken to remove
oxygen from injected water and this provides
an environment conducive to the growth of
the obligately anaerobic SRB. In addition,
production chemicals, such as antifoams, scale
inhibitors, and chemical oxygen scavengers,
are dosed into the injection water; these
may add to the nutrient pool of nitrogen,
carbon, and phosphorus available for SRB
growth (Sunde et al., 1990).
Flocculants such as aluminium or ferric
sulfate can also introduce sulfate into pre-
viously sulfate-free systems by the injection of
fluids such as river water. Although steps are
taken to minimize the activity of bacteria in
water injection systems, typically by con-
tinuous chlorination and batch dosing with
organic biocides, the efficacy is variable. For
these reasons, it is common for viable plank-
tonic SRB population densities approaching
1 ml
1 to be present in injected seawater, de-
spite the fact that incoming seawater may have
population densities 3 orders of magnitude
lower (Maxwell et al., 2002). It is inevitable,
therefore, that viable SRB will be injected
into water-flooded reservoirs, and in the case
of seawater flooding, in the presence of ap-
proximately 2,700 mg of available electron
acceptor liter
1 in the form of dissolved sul-
fate. Once inside the reservoir, the high spe-
cific area of reservoir rock, typically 0.93 to
5.5 m2 g
1 (Lake, 1989), provides a huge sur-
face for colonization by SRB. Studies of water
backflowed from Californian injection wells
showed that a region of high bacterial activity
associated with anaerobic or facultative anae-
robic bacteria existed in the reservoir close to
the injectors (McKinley et al., 1988). Al-
though this work failed to detect specific
biomarkers for the SRB Desulfobacter sp. and
Desulfovibrio desulfuricans in backflowed water,
later results from an injector in a Canadian
field showed H2S concentrations in excess of
120 mg ml
1, hydrogenase activity, and viable
SRB population densities of 103 ml
1 in the
first two tubing volumes of injection water
that had backflowed to the surface (Taylor
et al., 1991). In the Skjøld field in the North
126 & VANCE AND THRASHER
Sea, the presence of viable SRB and the gen-
eration of H2S in concentrations up to 60 mg
liter
1 within the first 80 m3 of backflowed in-
jection water have been described (Larsen et al.,
2000). Similar results have been recorded for
the Statfjord field in the North Sea, albeit with
a lower maximum concentration of 26 mg of
H2S liter
1 (Maxwell and Lejon, 1994). The
dominance of mesophilic SRB in backflowed
injection water and the bottomhole tempera-
ture of 278C in the Statfjord wells were both
consistent with the cooling of local zones of
the reservoir from 958C by the injection water
and the initiation of SRB activity in the re-
servoir close to the injectors. Estimates of the
extent of the zone from which the water was
returned suggests that significant SRB activity
is located within a 10-m radius of the injectors
(Maxwell and Lejon, 1994). Laboratory stu-
dies of oil field propionate-oxidizing SRB in
pressurized core floods demonstrated that a
sphere of reservoir rock with a radius of 9.3 m
could support the production of 50 kg of H2S
day
1 (Vance and Brink, 1994). It appears
feasible, then, that H2S production rates for
single production wells in souring fields of ap-
proximately 100 kg of H2S day
1 (Larsen et al.,
2000) could be accounted for by relatively
small zones of SRB activity near injection
wells. Using a specific rate of sulfate reduction
of 5  10
15 mol cell
1 day
1 determined for
a marine sediment (Jørgensen and Bak, 1991)
and a mass of 8  10
13 g cell
1 (Lynch, 1988)
implies that 0.5 tonnes of SRB biomass would
be required to generate the 100 kg of H2S
day
1 produced from a single production well.
Where injection wells connect with frac-
tures in the rock (whether fractures are natu-
rally present or hydraulically or thermally
induced by the injection of cold water), co-
lonization of fracture surfaces and growth of
biofilms may also contribute significantly to
the H2S generation process. The establishment
of sulfide-producing biofilms in porous rock
results in formation damage by the production
of extracellular polysaccharides and precipita-
tion of metal sulfides, causing plugging and
reducing permeability (Rosnes et al., 1991).
Another mechanism of formation damage
in injection wells (and valve operation in fa-
cilities) associated with the reinjection of
produced water involves the binding of as-
phaltene and iron sulfide solids, formation
particulates, corrosion inhibitors, and biomass
into a paste-like mass, commonly referred to
as schmoo. If these produced water reinjection
(PWRI) lines are also used for miscible gas
injection, the schmoo solids can dry out and
flake off, causing plugging of injection wells.
Bacterial activity in thick schmoo deposits on
pipe walls can also cause underdeposit pitting
corrosion. Treatments for iron sulfide solid-
related issues may involve acid washes (with
consequent hazard of generation of high H2S
concentrations), tetrakishydroxymethylphos-
phonium sulfate (THPS) biocide in combi-
nation with ammonium salts or organic
phosphonates (Gilbert et al., 2002), or other
solvent and surfactant treatments.
SRB PHYSIOLOGY
Fourteen species of SRB that have been iso-
lated from oil fields have individual growth
temperatures spanning 4 to 858C (Magot et al.,
2000). Desulfotomaculum spp. isolated from
North Sea produced water have been shown
to reduce sulfate at 808C when incubated at
pressure up to 4,500 lb/in2 (Rosnes et al.,
1991). On the basis of temperature and pres-
sure tolerance, oil field SRB, therefore, would
also be expected to be active in hotter zones of
waterflooded reservoirs, further from the
cooling influence of injection wells. As a
group, SRB are nutritionally diverse and able
to use electron donors and carbon sources
present in petroleum reservoirs such as acetate,
propionate, naphthenic acids, n-alkanes (C6 to
C20), hexadecene, benzoate, benzene, to-
luene, xylene, and phenol (Widdel, 1988;
Aeckersberg et al., 1991; Heider et al., 1999;
Lovley et al., 1995; Bak and Widdel, 1986).
Since acetate is present in formation waters at
concentrations as high as 1,500 mg liter
1, its
use as an electron donor by SRB has been
implicated in conceptual models of micro-
biological reservoir souring:
 7. RESERVOIR SOURING: MECHANISMS AND PREVENTION
CH3 COO
þ SO4 2
! 2HCO3
þ HS

Using probes for rRNA sequences, Brink et al.
(1994) detected the presence of acetate-oxi-
dizing SRB of the genus Desulfobacter in an
Alaskan seawater injection system, demon-
strating a possible route to the reservoir. Si-
milarly, propionate, somewhat less abundant
than acetate in formation waters, is oxidized to
the level of acetate by SRB, as shown in the
following reaction:
4CH3 CH2 COO
þ 3SO4 2
! 4CH3 COO

þ 4HCO3
þ 3HS
þ Hþ
It must be recognized, however, that reservoir
zones (where mixing occurs between injected
seawater with a high sulfate concentration and
formation water with a high concentration of
organic acid) are spatially limited. In addition
to the short-chain organic acids, hydrocarbons
such as hexadecane which are constituents of
residual oil have been shown to be completely
oxidized by SRB:
C16 H34 þ 12:25SO4 2
þ 8:5Hþ ! 16HCO3

þ 12:25H2 S þ H2 O
Other water-soluble hydrocarbons such as xy-
lene and toluene are also completely oxidized:
C7 H8 þ 4:5SO4 2
þ 3H2 O ! 7HCO3

þ 4:5HS
þ 2:5Hþ
Given the abundance of residual oil, even in
waterflooded zones, and the availability of
sulfate in deliberately deaerated injected sea-
water, it would be surprising if SRB activity
did not flourish in zones where the tempera-
ture was low enough. Although injection
water is deaerated, it can contain low con-
centrations of dissolved oxygen of around 50
ppb. It is feasible that a limited zone of aerobic
hydrocarbon oxidizing bacterial activity could
be supported on residual oil very close to in-
jection wells. Under such conditions, car-
boxylic acids (Widdel, 1988) and alcohols
(Myhr et al., 2002) may be formed and act as
electron donors and carbon sources for SRB.
Additionally, cells of aerobic hydrocarbon-
& 127
oxidizing bacteria may directly provide elec-
tron donors for SRB (Widdel, 1988). Sig-
nificantly, H2S generation has been observed
in a sand-packed column model containing
crude oil and oil field bacteria when flooded
with synthetic seawater, regardless of whether
the seawater was saturated with oxygen or
reduced with dithionite (Myhr, 2003). Al-
though SRB that utilized crude oil were iso-
lated from the column, they could only do so
in the presence of added surfactant, suggesting
that interaction between components of the
biofilm would be necessary to sustain H2S
generation under anaerobic conditions.
PWRI
Data from backflowed injection wells pre-
dominantly on seawater duty show that H2S
concentrations of tens of milligrams per liter
can be generated in injection water in the
close vicinity of injection wells. The practice
of PWRI as part of a waterflood has the po-
tential to increase H2S production beyond
seawater-induced souring (Tyrie and Ljosland,
1993). Unlike seawater, produced water often
contains significant concentrations of elec-
tron donors and carbon sources in the form
of acetate, propionate, and nitrogen (as am-
monia). Produced water contains different
production chemicals compared to injected
seawater, typically, scale inhibitor, corrosion
inhibitor, demulsifier, and wax inhibitor,
which may contribute to the nutrient pool
available to SRB. Over time, produced water
tends to contain a greater proportion of in-
jection water that has traversed the reservoir;
if this injection water is seawater, it brings
abundant sulfate. Even if sulfate availability is
low in produced water, it may be commingled
with seawater prior to reinjection, thus pro-
viding a suitable electron acceptor. Addition-
ally, produced water often contains much
higher population densities of viable SRB
than seawater. Without additions, SRB pre-
sent in produced water may generate signifi-
cant concentrations of H2S. In samples of
produced water from a field operated by the
BP company that contained 100 mg of acetate
128 & VANCE AND THRASHER
liter
1, 50 mg of propionate liter
1, and 105
mg of sulfate liter
1, indigenous SRB pro-
duced 28 mg of H2S liter
1. The H2S gener-
ated accounted for almost complete reduction
in the available sulfate. Formation waters with
much higher concentrations of organic acids
are associated with reservoirs currently under
development; if reinjected, these have the
potential to generate higher concentrations of
H2S. As shown in Fig. 2, the proportion of
formation water and commingled seawater in
such a PWRI scheme influences the max-
imum concentration of H2S generated directly
from the nutrients in the injected water.
LIMITATION OF SULFATE
REDUCTION
Although thermophilic SRB have been iso-
lated from producing oil reservoirs (Stetter
et al., 1993; Beeder et al., 1995), their sig-
nificance in the souring of seawater-flooded
reservoirs is not clear. Injecting large volumes
of cool seawater even into high-temperature
reservoirs has a significant cooling effect on
the zone adjacent to the injector. Injector
backflows suggest that within this zone, con-
FIGURE 2 Theoretical H2S production
in mixtures of seawater, assumed to contain
no organic acids and 2,700 mg of sulfate
liter
1, and produced water, assumed to
contain 115 mg of sulfate liter
1, 50 mg of
propionate liter
1, and 100 mg of acetate
liter
1.
centrations of H2S are produced in the water
phase that could eventually account for hun-
dreds of parts of H2S per million per volume
of production gas. Back-calculating the con-
centration of H2S in soured seawater necessary
to account for the most sour production gas
gives a figure of approximately 100 mg liter
1,
which is much less than the 900 mg liter
1
that could theoretically be produced if the
reduction of all of the sulfate available in sea-
water proceeded to completion. It seems clear
that SRB activity even in biofilms near in-
jectors is limited by some factor other than
sulfate availability. By the same token, when
injected seawater breaks through to produc-
tion wells after it passes through the reservoir,
it still contains much of the original sulfate,
which again implies that bacterial sulfate re-
duction is inhibited throughout the reservoir.
Indeed, produced water often contains con-
siderable concentrations of acetate and pro-
pionate in addition to sulfate. The limiting
factor, therefore, seems unlikely to be the
availability of an electron donor or acceptor. If
the limiting factor is the lack of a nutrient and
this lack is supplied by the injected seawater
 7. RESERVOIR SOURING: MECHANISMS AND PREVENTION
with its suite of added production chemicals,
this will be consumed rapidly in the vibrant
community of bacteria thriving in the biofilm
close to injection wells. The high specific
surface area of porous reservoir rock means
that oil field bacteria colonizing the surfaces in
a biofilm are able to very effectively strip
nutrients from the waterflood. Over 1,300 mg
of propionate liter
1, for example, was oxi-
dized across a 15-cm path length of 120-mil-
lidarcy (mD) sandstone with a flood velocity
of 0.43 m day
1 (Vance and Brink, 1994).
Downstream from the zone of activity, which
assumes that radial flow will occur in all other
parts of the reservoir, SRB activity will be
inhibited by the lack of the limiting nutrient.
Since the H2S is a by-product of bacterial
sulfate respiration, it is formed in the water
phase, the water-rock interface, or the water-
residual oil interface. Once generated, the H2S
moves through the reservoir dissolved in the
water phase in the direction of the waterflood.
The fate of the H2S within the reservoir de-
pends upon the prevailing physicochemical
conditions; these are reservoir specific.
H2S SCAVENGING IN THE
RESERVOIR
Reaction with iron-rich reservoir minerals is a
significant sink for H2S generated by SRB
(Ligthelm et al., 1991; Sunde et al., 1993; Eden
et al., 1993). Siderite (FeCO3), hematite (Fe2O3),
and magnetite (Fe3O4) have all been implicated
in the scavenging of H2S from the fluid phase, as
shown in the following reactions:
FeCO3 þ H2 S ! H2 O þ CO2 þ FeS
Fe2 O3 þ 3H2 S ! 3H2 O þ FeS2 þ FeS
Fe3 O4 þ 4H2 S ! 4H2 O þ FeS2 þ 2FeS
The participation of these minerals in the
scavenging reactions depends upon their so-
lubility in the water phase, and this results in
an aqueous solution of ferric ions being pre-
sent to react with the H2S, which is precipi-
tated as iron sulfides—from monosulfides
ranging in form from Fe1
xS to Fe1þxS to
disulfide pyrite (FeS2). Ligthelm et al. (1991)
& 129
reported finding framboidal pyrite in core
material from behind the floodfront, inter-
preted as evidence of scavenging of H2S
generated during the waterflood. The pre-
vailing temperature, pressure, and pH all in-
fluence the mineral solubility and hence the
magnitude of the scavenging reaction. The
possible degree of scavenging within a re-
servoir is rather difficult to predict, although
the relative abundance of the minerals in-
volved may be available from petrographic
analyses of reservoir core samples obtained
during drilling. However, the heterogeneity
of the formation may also mean that vast vo-
lumes of the reservoir will be of undetermined
composition. Sunde et al. (1993) lists crushed
reservoir rocks that adsorb between 5 and
19,600 mg of H2S per g of rock under labora-
tory conditions, although the high figures re-
ported may be overestimates compared to in
situ conditions. For instance, the material was
in an oxidized state, and crushing would in-
crease surface area available for adsorption and
other interactions. Other measurements of
H2S adsorption on uncrushed core have also
been made by Ballard and Beare (1997), for
example, giving values within this range. The
exact nature of the H2S scavenging miner-
alogy between an injection well and produc-
tion well can greatly influence the timing of
the appearance of H2S. This is one phenom-
enon that can possibly account for the patchy
distribution of sour gas between production
wells in one zone of a reservoir, although it
may be more likely to be dominated by dif-
ferences in water movement patterns. In
practice, the H2S scavenging mechanism is
thought to be a surface mechanism. This means
that even if significant quantities of iron mi-
nerals are present in terms of bulk rock com-
position, their scavenging capacity is limited
by the surface area available for interaction
with the H2S present in the water traveling
through the pore network, as well as other
specifics of the water-rock interactions in-
volving mineral dissolution, ion exchange,
oxidation-reduction, and other physical ad-
sorption processes.
130 & VANCE AND THRASHER
As the scavenging surfaces of the minerals
become exhausted, H2S dissolved in the water
phase moves with the waterflood to the pro-
ducers at higher concentrations. Changes in
injection water chemistry, temperature, and
pressure (e.g., on switching from seawater in-
jection to PWRI) during a waterflood may
also influence the solubility of previously
generated iron sulfide solids, thereby increas-
ing or decreasing the H2S-scavenging capacity
of the rock. Some H2S will also dissolve or
partition into the residual hydrocarbons be-
hind the floodfront, which therefore acts as an
additional sink for H2S. Given these uncer-
tainties, analog field examples can help define
expectations of formation scavenging capacity
and general souring development, while also
taking into account different fluid properties,
assumptions of injection water movement, and
aquifer activity.
WATER MOVEMENT
In addition to formation mineralogy, the
proximity of production wells to injectors and
the water injection rate influence the timing
and extent of H2S appearance in produced
fluids. Production wells relatively closer to
injectors experience breakthrough of injected
seawater earlier than those located more re-
motely. With the seawater eventually comes
H2S that has been generated in the reservoir.
Fractures or high-permeability streaks carry a
greater throughput of injection water, leading
to earlier breakthrough of H2S and higher
souring severity. Clearly, a short path length
between injector and producer, in combina-
tion with a high seawater injection rate, means
that any scavenging effect of the mineralogy
will become exhausted relatively quickly and
that H2S will arrive at the producer after a
relatively short period. Conversely, longer
path lengths and lower water injection rates
delay the appearance of H2S at producers.
H2S PARTITIONING
Partitioning of the H2S from the relatively
faster-moving water phase to the oil phase
effectively removes H2S from the injected
seawater front and delays its appearance in
production wells. The partition coefficient of
H2S between the phases depends upon the
temperature, pressure, and chemistry of the
two phases. Ligthelm et al. (1991) measured
the H2S partition coefficient between a si-
mulated North Sea oil and seawater under a
range of conditions relevant to North Sea
reservoirs and reported that the coefficient
only changed between values of 18 and 19.5
for conditions of 258C at 35,000 kPa to 1008C
at 15,000 kPa, respectively.
The concentration of H2S partitioned into
residual oil behind the floodfront is up to
approximately four to five times that in in-
jected seawater, i.e., around 400 ppmw. As-
suming a residual oil saturation of water in the
region of 35%, a porosity of 25%, and a rock
density of 2.8 g/cm3, the mass of H2S dis-
solved in residual oil behind the floodfront
would be on the order of 11 mg of H2S per g
of rock. This is an order of magnitude less than
the > 100 mg g
1 determined in mineralogy
scavenging experiments, and so it is expected
that the mineralogy aspects dominate over
dissolution into residual fluids in terms of re-
servoir sinks for biogenic H2S.
As discussed earlier, when the reservoir
fluids reach the surface, the H2S in the water,
oil, and gas will partition in test and produc-
tion separators according to the pressure, tem-
perature, and chemical characteristics of the
produced fluids. Other factors, such as ki-
netics, gas stripping effects, and mineral pre-
cipitation, may also cause measured partition
coefficients to deviate substantially from ther-
modynamic equilibrium estimates. Thermo-
dynamic models of the production process can
be used to estimate how H2S will distribute
between phases throughout the plant to aid
facility design and determine when metallurgy
and export thresholds could potentially be
exceeded (Al-Rasheedi et al., 1999). Typi-
cally, the highest concentration of H2S is
found in the gas phase, and it is dependent
upon the total mass of H2S produced and the
water cut and GOR. Additionally, if sour field
gas is used to gaslift production wells, this will
 7. RESERVOIR SOURING: MECHANISMS AND PREVENTION
have the effect of souring gas from wells that
are intrinsically sweet and could dilute the H2S
concentration in gas from sour wells.
DIAGNOSIS
Routine well surveillance is often accom-
plished with gas detection tubes to sample
production gas and quantify the concentration
of H2S present. This is a useful way of mon-
itoring a sweet reservoir, since any instances
of H2S presence would warrant further in-
vestigation. It is also less complex than mon-
itoring H2S in other phases. However, in a
field where sour gas has been produced from
start-up, surveillance at this level cannot on its
own provide enough information to judge if
further souring is occurring. By using the
measured concentration of H2S in the gas
phase and multiplying this concentration by
the gas production rate from the test separator,
it is possible to determine the mass of H2S
produced in the gas. Similarly, simultaneous
measurements of H2S concentration in the
water and oil phases, in combination with
water and oil production rates, allow the cal-
culation of the mass of H2S produced in these
phases. Adding these rates gives a value of total
H2S produced per production well per day.
This approach is less susceptible to the influ-
ences of changes in operational conditions
than determining the concentration of H2S in
the gas phase alone (Larsen et al., 2000). By
adding up the total H2S production rates for
all production wells, a figure for the whole
field is calculated; this can be useful in mon-
itoring the effect of treatments aimed at con-
trolling souring when these are applied across
the whole field if production is relatively
stable.
For the reasons discussed above, it may be
of particular value to monitor H2S production
rates and water chemistry closely to determine
injection water breakthrough in sentinel wells
that are expected to show injection water
breakthrough relatively early in field life, since
these are likely to be the first to show the
effects of souring (although regular monitor-
ing during production well tests would nor-
& 131
mally be expected to be carried out). On a
single-well basis, it can be constructive to plot
the sour water concentration or the injection
water sour water concentration over time.
The sour water concentration is simply the
total mass of H2S produced by the well per
unit of time divided by the mass of water
produced by the well per unit of time. This
approach also normalizes for changes in pro-
duction rates of the different phases and pro-
vides an index of souring severity that can be
compared between wells. A refinement of this
method can be applied if the injected water is
sufficiently different in chemical composition
to allow an estimation of its contribution to
the total water cut. Dividing total H2S pro-
duction by total injection water production
gives a value for injection water sour water
concentration. Monitoring injection water
sour water concentration can be particularly
insightful if it is accepted that injected water
contributes most of the H2S observed at pro-
duction wells.
PREDICTION
There is obviously a potential commercial
advantage in being able to predict if an un-
developed reservoir is likely to sour or if
changes in reservoir management of a produ-
cing field will increase the probability of
souring. In this context, the timing, the extent
of souring, and knowledge of the wells most
likely to be affected are important in for-
mulating options for possible control mea-
sures. Details of several mathematical models
of microbiological reservoir souring have been
published, which allow prediction of sour-
ing patterns in waterflooded reservoirs. The
models differ in terms of the detailed concept
upon which they are based. One concept is
based upon H2S being formed by SRB only in
reservoir zones where mixing occurs between
the sulfate-rich but organically impoverished
injected seawater and sulfate-depleted but
organic-acid-rich formation water (Ligthelm
et al., 1991). This mixing zone, which is driven
by diffusion and dispersion processes, is con-
sidered to move through the reservoir in the
132 & VANCE AND THRASHER
direction of the waterflood; its presence im-
plies that in a mature waterflood the mixing
zone, and hence the zone of SRB activity, will
be deep in the reservoir, remote from the
injection well. Since the nutritional require-
ments of SRB will be fulfilled only in the
water-mixing zone, which is at the seawater
front, SRB activity will proceed only where
suitable temperatures coincide with mixing
zones. This particular model, however, does
not consider the effect of temperature upon
SRB activity and hence H2S generation. If the
initial reservoir temperature is higher than the
injected water temperature, a zone of cooled
reservoir will develop, moving in the direc-
tion of the waterflood but lagging behind the
mixing zone. The model implies that ther-
mophilic SRB, flourishing in higher-tem-
perature regions of the reservoir, must be
responsible for H2S generation. The effects of
phase partitioning and mineral scavenging are
included in the modelling approach.
The establishment of reservoir zones in
which temperature conditions are suitable to
support mesophilic and thermophilic SRB
activity is a key feature of the souring model
described by Eden et al. (1993). The re-
quirement for a mixing zone between injec-
tion and formation waters is not essential to
this model. The nutritional requirement of the
SRB is satisfied by a term for sulfate conver-
sion ranging between 1 and 5% of the available
concentration, which is equivalent to a sour
seawater concentration of 9 to 45 mg of H2S
liter
1.
A more detailed modeling approach to the
generation of H2S by SRB in the reservoir is
described by Sunde et al. (1993). This model
assumes that a biofilm containing SRB is es-
tablished close to injection wells, the growth
of which is determined by the concentration
of a limiting nutrient present in the injected
seawater. During the initial growth phase, an
exponential increase in H2S production is
expected, but this reaches a maximum when
the limiting nutrient has become exhausted.
The production rate of H2S continues to in-
crease at a lower rate as the biofilm compo-
nents are turned over as additional nutrient
sources. The SRB growth is modelled ac-
cording to conventional Michaelis-Menten
kinetics with a fraction of available nutrients
assumed to be consumed by biofilm-dwelling
bacteria other than SRB. All H2S generation
takes place within a limited volume around
the injection well in this model. Scavenging of
H2S in the reservoir is treated as a two-step
process: the first step involves dissolved com-
ponents and the second phase involves solid-
phase components. The model is sensitive to
the nutrient status of the injected water, since
this is assumed to provide the limiting nutrient
for SRB growth.
All three models contain terms that describe
the scavenging mechanism which contributes
to attenuation in the breakthrough of H2S
relative to the breakthrough of injected sea-
water. The terms describing the generation of
H2S by SRB and the location of the zone of
sulfate reduction are, however, different in
each model. To some extent, these differences
may not be important. The most significant
virtue of any model is that it can be shown to
predict actual field experience and hence may
be used with some certainty as a basis for
commercial decisions.
A FIELD EXAMPLE
A typical example of a seawater-flooded re-
servoir that soured during production lies in
the United Kingdom sector of the North Sea,
northeast of the Shetland Islands at a water
depth of 160 m. The field consists of a typical
Brent Group Middle Jurassic sandstone re-
servoir containing light 388 American Petro-
leum Institute (API) gravity crude oil at a
total depth of 2,750 m. Production com-
menced in the late 1970s, reaching more than
100,000 barrels per day (bpd) after 4 years.
Seawater injection was used to provide sweep
and pressure support with injection rates ex-
ceeding 200,000 bpd. The field has a fault
block structure with five major compartments,
and there is limited aquifer influx into only
two of these. Initial reservoir temperature was
1048C with an initial pressure of around 6,100
 7. RESERVOIR SOURING: MECHANISMS AND PREVENTION
lb/in2. The natural GOR of the oil is low, at
around 220 to 290 standard cubic feet per
stock tank barrel (scf/stb), and as gaslift has
been used in only a small number of wells, this
means that gas-phase H2S concentrations are
very sensitive to the sour water concentration,
even at low water cuts. The formation water
has lower salinity than seawater (chloride
concentration is around 13,000 mg liter
1),
with acetate concentrations in the range of
600 to 1,400 mg liter
1. High-permeability
streaks of around 4,000 mD and rapid water
breakthrough have resulted in some wells
producing at very high water cuts and ex-
ceeding 1,000 to 3,000 ppmv of H2S in the
gas phase at surface, giving 500 ppmv in bulk
field gas. The field was originally designed for
sour service, so the main constraint on H2S
production was the gas export specification.
Several alternative techniques were used (in-
cluding organic peroxide, acrolein, dichlor,
triazine, and a molecular sieve) to sweeten the
export gas to pipeline specifications as H2S
concentrations rose through time (L. Cowie,
personal communication). More recently, as
production declined in the field, there was no
longer sufficient gas being produced to supply
fuel for operations, so the field subsequently
became an importer of gas for fuel.
FIGURE 3 Well water cut profiles in an example of a seawater-flooded, souring
reservoir.
& 133
Part of the field development involves a
single injection well, supporting six producers
in an isolated fault block. Injection water
movement is accelerated through part of the
formation by a high-permeability streak near
the base of the section. Phasing of drilling the
production wells has also resulted in changes
to the pattern of water movement through
each of the fault-constrained segments of this
sector of the field. The water cut (Fig. 3), gas-
phase H2S concentration (Fig. 4), and sea-
water-sour water concentration profiles (Fig.
5) show how souring develops after the wa-
terflood front reaches each producer. The
seawater sour water concentration profiles also
show consistency in the degree of souring
severity, timing, and rate of increase, de-
pending on where the wells are located in the
sector, and the process was modelled in detail
on the simulator described in Al-Rasheedi
et al. (1999). At any one time, there are only one
or two really dominant H2S producers out of
the six involved in this sector, as the wells start
to sour with different timings. It is therefore
important to define the key producers that
influence the overall H2S production profile
in any H2S forecast. These wells are typically
the ones that have the shortest injection water
breakthrough times and/or produce injection
134 & VANCE AND THRASHER

FIGURE 4 Well gas-phase H2S concentration profiles in an example of a seawater-

flooded, souring reservoir.

water for the longest time. Therefore, they
have the highest pore volumes throughput.
Conversion of the seawater sour water
concentration profiles from time into pore
volume throughput is done based on cumula-
tive incremental injection steps, typically nor-
malized against injection water breakthrough
time as a first approximation. The pore volume
throughput estimate is by necessity an averaged
value across the formation. Simplification of
the fluid movement complexity into a single
parameter of this sort of course has its limita-
tions compared with more-detailed simulation
techniques. Nonetheless, rapid transit of in-
jection water through a reservoir to a pro-
duction well is a key factor in influencing the
severity of souring, and the injection water
breakthrough time therefore represents an

FIGURE 5 Well seawater sour water concentration profiles in an example of a

seawater-flooded, souring reservoir. The total well H2S production is estimated from
gas-phase H2S concentration, allowing for H2S partitioning between gas, oil, and water
phases. The seawater fraction in produced water is estimated from chloride
concentrations.
 7. RESERVOIR SOURING: MECHANISMS AND PREVENTION & 135

important parameter for H2S production.
Normalized seawater-sour water concentra-
tion profiles for two of the wells are shown in
Fig. 6, wells 1 and 2. They differ from those
presented by Sunde et al. (1993), as a result of
influences from a number of possible factors
including mineralogy, reservoir heterogeneity,
and nutrient inputs in the injection water.
Two other wells (Fig. 5, wells 3 and 4) show
different normalized seawater sour water con-
centration profiles, but again they are con-
sistent with their relative locations in the
sector and potential differences in water
movement. Despite the uncertainties involved,
such sour water concentration profiles not
only have uses in forecasting future H2S pro-
duction to make commercial decisions affect-
ing oil field developments, they also provide
information on measures of the success (or
otherwise) of souring control treatments.
SOURING CONTROL
Methods of controlling microbial reservoir
souring are of three types: those that attempt
to deal with the H2S after it has been gener-
ated and produced from the reservoir, those
that attempt to prevent H2S from being
formed, and those that reduce the mass of H2S
that is generated. If microbial souring is lik-
ened to a disease caused by bacteria, the first
methods seek merely to mask the symptoms,
the second are prophylactic, and the third are
partial cures.
MASKING SYMPTOMS
The surveillance of individual wells described
previously allows the relative degree of sour-
ing to be mapped for all of the producing wells
in the field. It is then possible to select can-
didate wells for shutting in on the basis of their
contribution to total field production and the
tolerable concentration of H2S. This approach
can have a significant effect on field H2S
production, with reductions of 20% achieved
by shutting in producers with high water cuts
(Larsen et al., 2000). Significant effects can
also be achieved by slightly less terminal
measures by isolating zones producing sour
water under different circumstances. This can
be done by mechanical means (plugs or liner
patches) or by squeezing cement or other
chemicals such as gels into the relevant zones.
Water shutoff can have a double impact on
reducing souring by both decreasing H2S rate

FIGURE 6 Seawater sour water concentration profiles against normalized pore

volume throughput in an example of a seawater-flooded, souring reservoir. Pore
volume throughput is based on the dominant analog well 2 injection water
breakthrough time.
136 & VANCE AND THRASHER
into the well and reducing the partitioning
effect by lowering the water cut. However,
success is not guaranteed with these tech-
niques, due to operational difficulties or geo-
logical factors affecting water movement in
the near-well bore region.
Treatment of sour gas with liquid H2S
scavengers may be achieved in two ways.
Scavengers such as those based on triazine
chemistry are typically injected into the sour
gas stream through atomizing nozzles. Effec-
tive dose rates of approximately 7 to 15 parts
(by weight) of scavenger to 1 part of H2S
scavenged mean that scavenger consumption
can be significant on large, sour fields. Alter-
natively, the sour gas can be treated in a
bubble tower contactor containing the liquid
scavenger, such as amines including triazines,
sodium hydroxide, aldehydes, metal oxide
slurries, and nitrites. Solid-phase scavengers
based on iron or zinc oxide in contactor ves-
sels are generally used where weight and space
considerations are less important.
Sturman et al. (1999) carried out 36-h
squeeze treatments on production wells with
nitrite and demonstrated a significant drop in
H2S production for up to 7 months. Nitrite is
known to inhibit SRB activity and is also an
H2S scavenger, but the authors suggested that
the most significant mechanism was the re-
oxidation of H2S-scavenging, iron-rich mi-
nerals near the production well bore. Once
reoxidized by reaction with nitrite, the H2S
sinks participate in scavenging reactions that
lower the concentration of H2S in the fluids
moving into the production well. Eventually,
however, the sulfide capacity of the miner-
alogy becomes saturated, and the H2S pro-
ductivity of the well increases. This approach
seems best suited to wells with low H2S pro-
ductivities to avoid the need for frequent
treatments with nitrite, which carry a penalty
of deferred production.
PARTIAL CURES
The use of biocide to control microbiological
reservoir souring has been attempted with
varying degrees of success. Arguably, if the
active biofilm is close to injection wells, then
it should be more easily controlled by treat-
ments that are applied by way of the injection
water. Once an active biofilm of considerable
proportion has been established in the re-
servoir, it can only be treated successfully by a
large mass of biocide. Clearly, if the mass of
SRB in the biofilm close to an injector is on
the order of tonnes, it will require large bio-
cide doses to kill only the SRB. Since bacteria
other than SRB are also present in the biofilm,
the demand for biocide will be even greater
because the biocide will react indiscriminately
with all types of biomass. The application of
batch doses of THPS biocide in the injection
water, for example, has been shown to de-
crease the H2S production rate by up to 25%
(Larsen et al., 2000). To maintain control,
batch doses must be repeated at a frequency
related to the regrowth or recolonization rate
of the SRB. To maintain the H2S production
rate within 1 order of magnitude, an effective
biocide treatment must be applied at a fre-
quency of three doubling times or less. Figure 7
shows an example where the SRB biomass in
a reservoir is assumed to grow with a doubling
time of 4 days. The effect of repeated biocide
doses which kill 90% of the SRB present, at a
frequency of 7 days, is to delay H2S produc-
tion. In Fig. 7, a threshold level equivalent to
5 mg of sour water liter
1 is shown, assuming
an injection rate of 20,000 barrels of water per
day (bwpd) and no scavenging. If the biocide
kill efficiency is greater, the frequency of
dosing is higher, or the doubling time of SRB
is longer, there will be more benefit from such
treatments.
A partial cure for souring may be achieved
by selecting production chemicals that are
added to the injection water to exclude those
that provide additions to the nutrient pool
available for SRB. Ammonium bisulfite is
commonly used as an oxygen scavenger in sea-
water injection systems, for example, despite
the fact that it provides a source of reduced
nitrogen for bacterial growth (Sunde et al.,
1990). Indeed, these workers suggest that pro-
duction chemicals may increase the availability
 7. RESERVOIR SOURING: MECHANISMS AND PREVENTION
of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in in-
jected seawater by factors of up to 410, 19, and
3, respectively. Careful control over produc-
tion chemicals could restrict the growth rate of
SRB in the reservoir and hence have a positive
impact on souring. If, for example, restriction
of growth rate by a factor of 4 is achievable by
avoiding the use of production chemicals that
are potential nutrient sources, it would take
four times as long to reach a particular rate of
H2S production.
PROPHYLAXIS
If SRB could be excluded from oil field op-
erations, then it would be possible to control
reservoir souring. There is, however, growing
evidence that petroleum reservoirs have in-
digenous microflora that may include meso-
philic and thermophilic SRB (McInerney
et al., 1993; Magot et al., 2000). Even if the
producing zone of a reservoir did not have an
indigenous SRB population, it is well known
that drilling muds often contain viable popu-
lations of SRB (Dow, 1987), and this is a
vehicle for contaminating the waterflooded
zones at an early stage of reservoir develop-
ment. In addition, any activity that requires
injection of liquid into an injection well, such
& 137
FIGURE 7 Impact of a biocide
treatment that kills 90% of an SRB
population every 7 days. It was
assumed that the initial SRB popula-
tion was 1 cell; the population had a
doubling time of 4 days and a specific
rate of sulfate reduction of 5  10
15
mol cell
1 day
1. The daily produc-
tion rate of H2S assumes that water
from a 20,000-bwpd injection well
reaches a sour water concentration of
5 mg liter
1.
as an injection test or fracture initiation, has
the potential to introduce SRB into a near-
well-bore zone, which will eventually be
subject to a high flux of nutrients in the in-
jected water stream. As previously noted,
the injection water itself also introduces ac-
tive SRB into the reservoir. Even if the viable
SRB population density is low, the high rate
of water injection into each well ensures that
the near-well-bore region receives a sig-
nificant level of inoculation each day. None-
theless, concern is often expressed over the
impact that the SRB population of injected
water may have on the degree of reservoir
souring. Given injection rates in the region of
20,000 bwpd per well, it would require a
complete removal of SRB to make a sig-
nificant impact on the rate of souring. Figure 8,
for example, shows that an initial SRB po-
pulation near an injector of 1, 10, or 100 cells
makes little difference to the development of
significant production rates of H2S.
If sulfate could be removed from injection
water, this would inactivate the most sig-
nificant metabolic pathway to H2S produc-
tion. Other oil field chemicals such as
thiosulfate and sulfite can also be converted to
sulfide by SRB (Widdel, 1988); hence, the
138 & VANCE AND THRASHER

FIGURE 8 Effect of initial SRB population. It was assumed that the initial
SRB population was 1, 10, or 100 cells. The population had a doubling time
of 1 day and a specific rate of sulfate reduction of 5  10
15 mol cell
1 day
1.
The daily production rate of H2S assumes that water from a 20,000-bwpd
injection well reaches a sour water concentration of 5 mg liter
1.

complete removal of sulfate alone may not
totally prevent sulfide production. Rizk et al.
(1998) have shown that desulfated seawater
from the Marathon Brae platform, which had
a sulfate concentration of 160 mg liter
1 (after
50% dilution), resulted in sulfide production
of 50 mg liter
1 in a sand pack reservoir model
flooded with synthetic formation water in
addition to the desulfated water. These au-
thors suggested that sulfate concentrations
as low as approximately 50 mg liter
1 are
achievable by applying nanofiltration tech-
nology to water injection facilities. Potentially,
however, even 50 mg of sulfate liter
1 in in-
jected water could give rise to 16.6 mg of H2S
liter
1 in reservoir sour water. Once the ef-
fects of scavenging and partitioning in the
reservoir have proceeded to completion,
production of this concentration of sour water
would give rise to the gas-phase concentra-
tions shown in Fig. 1. Partial desulfation
would be expected to slow the rate of reser-
voir souring but would not be a total cure.
Interestingly, the half-saturation concentration
of sulfate for bacterial sulfate reduction is very
low. Widdel (1988) gives a range of 0.5 to 20
mg liter
1, while Sunde et al. (1993) consider
0.1 mg liter
1 to be typical of marine SRB.
Desulfation to an extremely low concentra-
tion, therefore, would be required to have an
effect on the rate at which SRB produce H2S,
but desulfation to moderate concentrations
would limit the maximum concentration of
sour water that could be produced. Some in-
jection facilities are now being designed to
remove sulfate from seawater to concentra-
tions significantly below 50 mg liter
1 with
mitigation of the barium sulfate scale as the
primary economic driver. This will have the
additional benefit of limiting the maximum
potential reservoir souring severity.
Manipulation of the reservoir environment
in a way that discourages SRB activity can be
achieved by additions to existing waterfloods
 7. RESERVOIR SOURING: MECHANISMS AND PREVENTION & 139

or by using alternative sources of water. Ma-
nipulation of salinity is one parameter that has
been used to positive effect. Postgate (1984)
described a halotolerant strain of D. desulfur-
icans that was grown in a medium containing
11% NaCl, and Cord-Ruwisch et al. (1987)
suggested that the activity of most SRB is
inhibited in NaCl concentrations above 5 to
10%. Significantly, Cord-Ruwisch et al. de-
scribed SRB from an oil field production
system that grew slowly in 27% NaCl, al-
though concentrations above 15% were in-
hibitory to all other SRB isolated from the
same source. Tinker et al. (1983) described the
souring of a Michigan oil field resulting from
the initiation of waterflooding with low-
salinity water with NaCl concentrations of up
to 0.03% into formation waters with NaCl
concentrations up to 36.6%. Production of
H2S occurred when the NaCl concentration
produced fell below 12%. Subsequent changes
of the waterflood to higher-salinity water in-
hibited H2S production.
Treatment of injection water with nitrate is
a relatively new technology for control of
souring and is discussed in chapter 10. The
technology has been demonstrated to be ef-
fective at reservoir scale (Sunde et al., 2004;
Larsen, 2002; Jenneman et al., 1997). A po-
sitive impact on H2S production after treat-
ing injected seawater with calcium nitrate has
also been observed on the BP Foinaven float-
ing production, storage, and offloading vessel
site. Well P27 was chosen as a sentinel well,
since it was predicted to sour early in field life
due to the relatively fast breakthrough of in-
jected seawater. The prediction was shown to
be accurate when H2S was first detected in
well P27 in March 2000. Nitrate treatment
started in May 2001 at a dose of 56 ppmv of a
45% Ca(NO3)2 solution in the 140,000-bpd
seawater injection system. Breakthrough of
the nitrate-treated water was predicted in May
2002; at this time, a large decrease in sour
seawater concentration was observed, as illu-
strated in Fig. 9. This was interpreted as an
early indication of the success of the treat-
ment. Since that time, H2S production from
the well has remained significantly lower than
predicted by comparison with analog wells in
the field example that had produced a similar
number of pore volumes of injected water

FIGURE 9 Effect of continuous calcium nitrate treatment of injection seawater on seawater

sour water concentration in the Foinaven reservoir. The seawater sour water concentrations for
two untreated wells in the analog field are shown for comparison.
140 & VANCE AND THRASHER
FIGURE 10 Effect of continuous calcium nitrate treatment of injection seawater on H2S
production in the Foinaven reservoir. The H2S production rate that would normally be expected,
based on the number of pore volumes of injection water, is shown for comparison.
(Fig. 10). Based on the comparison with the
analog wells, a >90% reduction in daily H2S
production has been achieved. Similarly, in
terms of sour seawater concentration, >90%
reduction has been observed. Other wells
further from injectors have also shown early
evidence of benefit from the nitrate treat-
ments. Treatment of injection seawater with
nitrate stimulates nitrate-reducing bacteria
(NRB), and this leads to an inhibition of SRB
activity in topside seawater injection systems
(Thorstenson et al., 2002). Several mechan-
isms have been proposed which explain the
inhibition of SRB; these include competition
for electron donors, an increase in redox po-
tential, oxidation of H2S by nitrate-reducing,
sulfide-oxidizing bacteria, and the production
of incompletely reduced nitrogen compounds
such as NO2 or N2O, which inhibit the sulfate
reduction pathway. It is possible that different
mechanisms are more important in particular
environments and that multiple mechanisms
may be involved in any application.
Both heterotrophic and chemolithotrophic
NRB have been shown to be widely dis-
tributed in production systems in five western
Canadian oil fields; in 44% of samples, NRB
outnumbered SRB (Eckford and Fedorak,
2002). Nitrate treatment may, therefore, have
a wider application than injection water.
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