Culture-based methods of traditional microbiology applied to microbiological processes
involved in reservoir souring and microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) pose a risk of yielding
inadequate or contradictory results. Therefore, the industry calls for more accurate and faster
techniques. The need for in-situ cultivation-independent methods has over the past ten years facilitated
the development of several analytical methods for determination of bacterial identity, quantity, and to
some extent function, applied directly to samples of the native population. This development has so far
been limited regarding practical application and it has only recently been transferred to the oil industry.