Microbial community composition in two high temperature Argentinian oil fields

The microbial community composition of the samples from two Argentinian fields was determined by 454-pyrosequencing. Samples from producing well, water plant and injection well were collected from Barrancas and Chihuido de la Salina (CHLS) fields. These fields are peculiar in having high in-situ sulfate (16-9 mM), salinity (65-40 grams/litre) and temperature (80-60 *C). The 454-pyrosequencing results revealed the presence of thermophilic and/or halophilic microbial community in the produced water samples. The water plant and injection well samples have mesophilic and /or halophilic community actively utilizing oil organics and reducing sulfate to sulfide. The entire set of the raw reads is available from Sequence Read Archive (SRA) at NCBI.