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Upstream Oil & Gas - Industry Primer

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Industry Primer  |   Products   |   Calculations  |    Test Program Setup   |  Additional Resources

For a quick introduction of LuminUltra's capabilities in this market, go here.

Background

The upstream oil & gas industry involves the extraction, recovery and delivery of energy sector products to so-called ‘Downstream’ applications, where energy products are processed to make viable products.  For more information on how our products can be used in the downstream sector, go here.

The Upstream sector includes the extraction of oil and gas as well as the transportation of those raw materials to processing plants such as refineries.

upstream

This sector can be divided into three subsections:

  • Onshore Recovery – refers to drilling operations to recover oil or natural gas from land-based wells.
  • Offshore Recovery – refers to extraction of oil from underwater wells.
  • Transportation – refers to tankers and pipelines that are used to transport the extracted raw material to the processing plant.  This is also sometimes referred to as ‘Midstream’.  Though Midstream applications are more traditionally associated with Downstream applications, the concerns relating to microbial growth in the Midstream application are more closely related to Upstream applications.

Additional Information:

The QGO-M test kit is fully compliant with ASTM Standard D7687 for the measurement of ATP in fuels, fuel/water mixtures and fuel-associated waters. The full standard can be obtained here: http://www.astm.org/Standards/D7687.htm.

How can ATP monitoring help?

Water is an ever-present consideration in all parts of the Upstream sector.  Water is frequently found in oil and gas wells; as well, water is used to elevate well pressures, to ‘fracture’ shale rock and release natural gas, and as a diluent/flow-improver for transportation.  Where ever water is found in upstream applications, microbial growth is a significant concern.  Microbial proliferation in organics-laden water can occur very quickly and can have a number of profound effects, such as line and tank fouling, microbially-induced corrosion (MIC), and overall product degradation.

The biggest benefit of ATP monitoring in oil and gas is early detection.  Since the doubling time of some microorganisms is very fast in organics-laden fluids (~30 minutes), on-the-spot assessment of oilfield water or fuel quality is essential to prevent biodeterioration.

ATP monitoring also provides an invaluable guide for operators when administering biocide treatment to reduce or suppress microbial growth.  In bench studies to determine biocide effectiveness, ATP tests can be used as a complement to traditional culture tests as a means to determine the full impact of the biocide against the total population.  Furthermore, because it does not have interferences from biocide residuals, 2nd Generation ATP can guard against situations where biocides prevent growth in culture media, but would be otherwise ineffective in the field.

Rather than waiting days to obtain test results using traditional culturing methods, ATP tests provide on-the-spot results for same-shift troubleshooting. Moreover, ATP tests detect all living organisms, not just the relatively small percentage that forms colonies in typical growth media. Following initial ATP testing, follow-up tests involving specific culture tests can be done to validate control mechanisms to guard against specific microbial threats such as sulphate-reducing and acid-producing bacteria.

Testing Landscape

Complimentary Methods

  • Culture Tests – plate methods such as counts, bug bottles, and dip slides all provide information about specific organisms.  By using these methods together with ATP analyses, one can therefore achieve a much more complete picture of microbiological activity since the total population as well as key indicator organisms can be monitored.
  • Biological Activity Reaction Tests (BART) – Portable method to detect specific types of microbe.  In oil & gas, Sulfate Reducing Bacteria (SRB) and Acid Producing Bacteria (APB) BARTs are the most useful.  
  • Dilution Bottles – laboratory-based analyses to enumerate APB, SRB, and other species.  Feedback tends to be long (7 days – APB, 28 days – SRB) and can be adversely affected by TDS and biocides.  While this method can be very sensitive, the incubation time is not at all conducive to preventative action in the event of a contaminated sample and is therefore better suited as a 2nd-tier measurement.  Confidence interval for these methods are within 1-2 logs of microbial activity. 
  • Check Bottles – laboratory-based analyses to enumerate SRBs.  Results take 1-10 days and can be adversely affected by biocides.  
  • Biocide Residual – where available, the measurement of residual, free biocide concentration can be used to determine the ‘level of security’ remaining against microbial proliferation.
  • Gross Observation – Visual inspection and performance data can provide an indication of water quality.

Competitive Methods

  • 1st Generation ATP – while ATP monitoring technologies have been used in various microbial growth control applications in the past, they rarely employ a reagent system that is adequately optimized for fluid-based samples, let alone organics-laden fluids such as petroleum products.  Competing ATP systems underestimate kill because they are prone to interferences from inhibitory components (solids, dissolved metals, biocides, and non-microbial or dead biomass ATP).
  • ATP ‘Pens’ – these devices are like dipsticks for ATP testing and are available from many vendors serving primarily the sanitation application within the food manufacturing sector.  They are very convenient to quickly verify the efficacy of cleaning programs in this industry; however, for problems associated with biofilms, they have the following shortcomings:
    • Using a pen test format, a small sample volume is analyzed, typically 50 microliters. Therefore, sensitivity is low and sampling errors are high.  Using LuminUltra’s Quench Gone  technology, much larger samples can be used to concentrate the organisms if necessary.
    • Conventional pens typically exhibit poor ATP extraction efficiency, especially for microorganisms which are present in clumps because dipsticks will not pick up these organisms unless the clumps are very small. This results in very high sampling error and a high risk of severely underestimating the extent of the microbial growth which is present for wastewater treatment, biofouling and biocorrosion applications.
    • The pen type format is also much more susceptible to interferences that result in false negative results.  For example, a salinity level on the order of 9,000 mg/l (as NaCl) could be expected to reduce the light output by approximately 70%.

The latter two problems are especially problematic with microbial deposits (e.g. on corrosion coupons) containing oil and in water samples with high salinity, heavy metals, and organic compounds that inhibit enzyme activity.

LuminUltra’s 2nd generation ATP technology provides the following advantages over 1st Generation methods:

    • Quantitative sample transfer using micropipettes ensures accuracy.
    • Superior chemistry provides complete recovery of Total ATP (tATP) by achieving complete extraction.
    • Optimized methods and chemistry ensure that interferences are minimized (for example: salinity, oil, biocides).
    • Use of ATP standard (UltraCheck 1) converts RLU for high precision.
    • Background ATP interference from dead cells is removed from analysis.

To learn more about the differences between 1st and 2nd Generation ATP methods, view our brochure.