About

As the supply of light sweet crude oil diminishes, the world is becoming more and more dependent on unconventional sources of energy including heavy oil, coal and shale oil.  The extraction and utilization or conversion of these low-value forms of carbon into higher value and cleaner-burning forms of carbon are both expensive and come with a significant environmental footprint.

Taxon has searched widely to find microbes that are able to convert these recalcitrant carbon sources into forms that can be recovered and utilized more efficiently and with less environmental impact and has developed processes that harness the potential of these extraordinary microbes and the communities in which they reside.  With the world increasingly relying on ever more challenging sources of energy, Taxon is the go-to source of expertise for genome-based approaches to hydrocarbons.

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Technology

Taxon has invested years of work developing a battery of proprietary genomics, bioinformatics and cultivation-based tools to understand how microbial communities function in oil and gas reservoirs. This multi-pronged approach includes first creating a comprehensive census, or profile, of the resident microbes in a target reservoir and creating a carbon-flow model depicting how the microbial community is functionally organized and how the various microbes participate in the resident biogeochemical processes. A strategic plan can then be assembled to modulate the processes that take place in the subsurface.

Just as in individual people, every subsurface oil and gas reservoir is unique. Each reservoir has unique geology, geochemistry and microbiology characteristics. No single solution (microbes or nutrients to stimulate endogenous microbes) will work best, if at all, in all reservoirs. The most effective and efficient answer is to develop ‘Personalized’ solutions that are optimized to work in a target environment. Taxon does this in a manner analogous to how personalized medicine is developed and applied in healthcare.

A Rational Approach. Taxon utilizes the full bandwidth of information it collects to develop optimized nutrients for the resident microbes in a target reservoir. These nutrient formulations are also designed with the reservoir type and local geochemistry in mind. Taxon also develops customized sets of microbes, termed synthetic consortia, which are optimized to perform specific biochemical transformations in the subsurface (“in situ”) where oil and gas accumulations exist. This combination of optimized nutrients and synthetic consortia can lead to increased process transformation rates that cannot be achieved through guesswork or trial-and-error approaches.

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Applications

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.

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