Analysis of the microbial community composition of water samples from a Seawater Injection System (SWIS) in Alaska using pyrosequencing
Analysis of the microbial community composition of water samples from a Seawater Injection System (SWIS) in Alaska using pyrosequencing
The energy industry is becoming increasingly aware that microorganisms present in the source water in a SWIS facility can influence the overall quality of the seawater treated in the facility and affect other downstream processes. An oil and gas industry's seawater injection treatment facilities at the Alaska site, regularly transports seawater from the Arctic Ocean through their seawater treatment plants. The overall chemistry of the water flowing through the pipeline is similar to that of the untreated seawater. As a part of a routine baseline quality analysis of the seawater flowing through this SWIS, seawater samples were collected, DNA extracted using Marmur's method and pyrosequenced for 16S rDNA. Successful pyrosequencing generated 48,681 good reads that were taxonomically assigned to phylum, class and genus level of classification of the identified microorganism from the seawater samples. Based on the pyrosequencing results, overall microbial community composition within the seawater treatment facility was similar to that of the microbial communities commonly found in marine and seawater environment. In addition, a higher percentage of SRB Desulfovibrio was observed in the pipeline associated biofilm samples from seawater passing through the pigging facilities. This research was supported by funding from Genome Canada, Genome Alberta, the Government of Alberta and Genome BC.
Water samples from a’ seawater Injection system (SWIS) were collected at the Alaska and sent with the objective of 16S pyrosequencing. Knowing the microbial abundance and identification of the water samples in the SWIS will help the company to quantify a baseline for monitoring pipelines and water injection systems. This, in turn, will affect the selection of chemical treatments to control microbial activity.