Abstract
Microbial prospecting technique was applied in El Hajeb oilfield, Tunisia for potential hydrocarbon resource exploration by examining the anomalous abundance of hydrocarbon oxidizing bacteria. The method depends on the seepage of light gaseous hydrocarbons such as C1 - C5 from the petroleum pools to the shallow surface giving the reasonable conditions to the development of highly specialized bacterial population. A total of 51 soil samples were collected from 1.5 m depth. Bacterial counts for n-propane utilizing bacteria ranged between nil and 2.44x10(5)cfu/gm. The light gaseous hydrocarbons analysis showed that their concentrations were 102, 55, 41, 20, 21, 19, 10 and 141 ppb for C1, C2, C3, iC4, nC4, iC5, nC5 and sigma C2(+), respectively. The gas concentration maps showed the presence of dynamic hydrocarbons micro-seepage from petroleum systems. The integrated geomicrobial and adsorbed soil gas results demonstrated that the anomalous hydrocarbon zones spread in all territory which could presumably help to evaluate highpotentialareas. In conclusion, our study confirms that the use of microbial data and adsorbed gas analyses of soil samples is a low cost tool for hydrocarbon exploration. This technique has been confirmed and can be applied successfully in frontier basins.