Technology from the new Houston-based biotech company GeOME Analytics has contributed to the sequencing of about 50 percent of the human genome. Now, the same technology is being used by the oil and gas industry to optimize production and planning.

After GeOME received several requests from oil and gas operators asking if it could apply its DNA sequence methodology subsurface, the company partnered with a large global operator, and three years later, GeOME has fully qualified the technology and is mapping stratigraphy in ways previously not possible.

GeOME analyzes subsurface microbial DNA, on- or offshore, using its technology to determine what is present and nonexisting to accurately determine production details by benches, reservoir allocation or other detailed data.

Using GeOME’s cancer research as an analogy, the technique of subsurface tracing is like lineage tracing for metastatic breast cancer. It is just less complex tracing microbes in distinct stratigraphic layers, compared to cancer cells that may have traveled all over the human body.

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