Automated DNA extraction platforms offer solutions to challenges of assessing microbial biofouling in oil production facilities.

The analysis of microbial assemblages in industrial, marine, and medical systems can inform decisions regarding quality control or mitigation. Modern molecular approaches to detect, characterize, and quantify microorganisms provide rapid and thorough measures unbiased by the need for cultivation. The requirement of timely extraction of high quality nucleic acids for molecular analysis is faced with specific challenges when used to study the influence of microorganisms on oil production.

Microbial communities in bulk fluids and biofilms of an oil facility have similar composition but different structure.

The oil-water-gas environments of oil production facilities harbour abundant and diverse microbial communities that can participate in deleterious processes such as biocorrosion. Several molecular methods, including pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA libraries, were used to characterize the microbial communities from an oil production facility on the Alaskan North Slope. The communities in produced water and a sample from a 'pig envelope' were compared in order to identify specific populations or communities associated with biocorrosion.