Oil & gas is one of the largest water user industries. Actually, an average of three to five barrels of water is produced per barrel of oil.
Fresh water is not used in oil production because it is a scarce resource. Instead, seawater is often injected in addition to produced water extracted from the reservoir during oil production. Seawater brings nutrients (e.g., organic carbons) and oxidants (e.g., sulfate). It also brings various microbes.
The sea and ocean microbes are on one hand the most important factor to maintain the globe environmental health, they mitigate ~40% of man-made carbon emission and produce 50% of the oxygen we breath. On the other hand, when they are encountering artificial man-made surface, they immediately attached to it, a phenomenon which defined as biofilm formation. Biofilm has become one of the major problems in several marine industries. They can increase the energy demand in marine transportation up to 55% due to attachment to ship hulls and by that affects ships through the loss of speed, decreased maneuverability, increased fuel consumption and thereby increased emissions of harmful gases. And in oil and gas they are the cause of Biocorrosion (also known as microbiologically influenced corrosion or MIC) results in $44 bn annual Global Pain due to up to 20–40% of serious corrosion cases and up to 70–95% of pipeline leaks.
This damage drives the market for corrosion inhibitors estimated to be worth $7.5bn in 2019 and biocides (anti-microbial toxic chemicals) market estimated to be $18bn in 2022.
The environmental fate characteristics of industrial biocides used in oil and gas applications are of increasing concern due to the industry’s drive for sustainable best practices and regulatory pressure on water use and disposal.
The ecological- environmental paradox in biocorrosion treatment is that to save the world from oil and gas leaks we use anti-microbial toxic chemicals that pollute the environment and decrease oceans global warming mitigation activity.
In order to explore new ways to deal with biofilm Dr’ Amir Zlotkin, while serving as the head of the infectious diseases research lab at Sheba medical center, started to explore how the marine natural surfaces like sea anemone, corals and whales devoid the formation of biofilm on their body surface. The research led to the discovery of a natural protein that instead of killing microbes it communicates with them by bio-signal drive the microbes to disperse their biofilm by themselves. By translating this natural protein to a small synthetic bio mimetic peptide DisperseBio Ltd, a company founded by Dr Zlotkin, can supply now a new “non-killing anti-microbial” solution to deal with the biofilm problems without damaging environment and the beneficial global warning mitigation activities of our world oceans and seas microbiomes.