SPE OKC March Monthly Luncheon

Organic Oil Recovery- Utilizing Indigenous Ecology for Additional Recovery

Zach Broussard

Hunting Energy Services

Abstract:

Organic Oil Recovery is a tertiary oil recovery process that only stimulates certain resident microbes that already exist in your reservoir to release residual, bypassed and trapped oil — without chemicals, downhole modifications, topside changes, or capex. By feeding the microbes a specific targeted nutrient blend, we activate a gene in the target microbial species to move them from the water phase (hydrophilic) to the oil/water interface (hydrophobic) where they reduce interfacial tension and release oil left behind by conventional methods. The process is simple: batch treatments using ISO tanks and temporary pumping equipment.

Biography:

Zach Broussard is Product Line Manager, Americas, for Hunting, where he leads commercialization of Organic Oil Recovery (OOR), a technology that utilizes indigenous microbes to increase oil recovery. Prior to Hunting, Zach co-founded Gold H2 (now Eclipse Energy) and served as CTO, advancing microbial pathways for in-situ hydrogen generation. Before that, he held roles at ChampionX focused on mitigating microbiologically influenced corrosion in upstream oilfield applications, bridging lab development with field implementation. He has overseen multi-disciplinary teams across R&D, pilot design, and reservoir diagnostics, integrating DNA sequencing, microbial ecology, and production analytics with operator workflows.

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