Not too many people did know about it, and, by keeping the real technology, which was developed under emergent conditions at the time, secret, the major oil companies involved in the theft attempts have for over 20 years now been attempting to back engineer, purloin, and otherwise develop a technology that improves upon conventional technology, but has limitations at 65% recovery and is not reliable time after time. In fact both Schlumberger and Halliburton, with whom the discover of the technology that does not have those limitations has recently broken off negotiations after the seemingly ubiquitous theft attempts were put on the table, have the industry tied up in knots insisting on the utility of this lesser technology. If you are discussing anything other than the Keane MLM, DNF and KpX technologies, then we would like to know about it, as they get 99.99% recovery without any of the problems which you mention and actually have benign environmental effects.
You are either talking about the same process, possibly in a purloined application, or something altogether different that we don't know about. We are aware of the bacteria processes but have never seen one capable of robust, large scale, time-after-time reliable application.
If there is a better process we challenge you to bring it forward and we will support it in the name of Oil Independence, which is now a strategic imperative.