Xref: utzoo sci.bio:2314 sci.bio.technology:2 sci.environment:2683
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!silver!chiaravi
From: chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Lucius Chiaraviglio)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.bio.technology,sci.environment
Subject: Re: Oil-Eating Bacteria
Summary: You can't eat oil without oxygen
Keywords: oil-eating bacteria eating up our oil reserves?
Message-ID: <26170@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 17 Sep 89 21:24:41 GMT
References: <1989Sep17.193703.6598@cs.rochester.edu>
Reply-To: chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Lucius Chiaraviglio)
Organization: Department of Biology at Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 47

In article <1989Sep17.193703.6598@cs.rochester.edu>
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu.UUCP (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>With all of the publicity surrounding the Exxon Valdez spill, I was
>wondering what ever happened to the oil-eating bacteria that genetic
>engineers were working on a few years ago.  I seem to remember it was
>designed specifically for cleaning up oil spills.
>
>Is it operational yet?  If so, why didn't they use it on the Valdez
>spill?  If not, when do they expect it to become operational?

	I have often wondered the same thing.  As a matter of fact, some
naturally-occurring bacteria eat oil -- I just heard on NPR news (I know, not
the greatest source of information, but I have heard of naturally-occurring
oil-eating bacteria elsewhere) that one thing tried during the cleanup was to
put fertilizer on oil-coated areas (I don't remember the details) to encourage
growth of these oil-eating bacteria.

>Can it survive in the environment of an underground oil deposit?  If
>so, what safeguards exist to prevent it from getting into, say, the
>Alaskan or Saudi oilfields?  It seems like it could make an
>exceedingly nasty terrorist / economic warfare weapon.

	All of the biological ways of eating oil that I have ever heard of
involve oxidizing it with oxygen (biological ways of oxidizing it using
sulfate or nitrate are conceivable, but I haven't heard of any).  The
naturally-occurring oil-eating bacteria also have this limitation -- in the
above-mentioned NPR broadcast they mentioned that the bacteria would not be
able to do anything to oil that had soaked into gravel, soil, or sand due to
the lack of a significant oxygen supply down there.  The only thing other than
oxygen capable of reacting with oil that is likely to be present in large
amounts in oil-soaked environments (including oilfields) is water.  However, I
have not heard of a satisfactory biological means of getting energy out of the
reaction of hydrocarbons with water, which takes high temperatures to do
industrially.  Organisms are not going to eat something if they cannot get
energy or something else useful out of it (and if they are getting something
else, but not energy, then they have to have another source of energy
alongside it).  Unless somebody finds a way to get bacteria to get energy from
reaction of hydrocarbons with water (I don't know if this even gives off
energy at reasonable temperatures -- should an enzyme be find that does this
reaction, it might tend to run the other way -- anyone know more about the
thermodynamics of this?), the oilfields are safe (as long as you don't pump
air down there).

|   Lucius Chiaraviglio    |    Internet:  chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu
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