Vivione Biosciences Inc. has entered into a preferred vendor relationship with Ely and Associates to provide microbiology testing and equipment for oil and gas production facilities.

Vivione's RAPID-B bacterial testing platform and services by exposing the technology to Ely's customer base of over 600 domestic and international Energy & Production Companies. "Our testing services have been incredibly well received by our current base of customers in the U.S. and Canada. Becoming Ely's preferred testing service will allow us to quickly scale our business by gaining access to over 100,000 potential bacterial tests annually," according to Kevin Kuykendall, CEO of Vivione.

Through the arrangement, Ely will be adding the Oil and Gas industry's latest advance in microbial testing to its arsenal of technical solutions. "We are committed to bringing our clients the best technology available to assist them in maximizing the effectiveness and productivity of their fracturing & drilling operations," said John Ely, Founder and CEO of Ely Associates. "Well stimulation activities can introduce bacteria into the formation that can impede production, corrode infrastructure, and sour the well. Vivione's bacterial detection platform and services will allow us to immediately assist our clients helping them to save money and time by quickly resolving or preventing problems that occur before, during, and after treatment."

Ely's consulting engineers will now have access to Vivione's suite of testing services that include assessments with the proprietary RAPID-B platform .

The RAPID-B system is a rugged, medical grade, diagnostic device consisting of hardware, software, and wetware. Developed in collaboration with the FDA, RAPID-B provides a technological advancement in bacterial detection for the Food Safety, Oil and Gas, and Clinical Diagnostics markets. The system can be deployed into the oil field or field based lab environment and render quantitative and qualitative bacterial analysis in 20 minutes or less.

Current oilfield testing methods require "culturing" or growing the bacteria in order to detect their presence. This process can take up to 28 days. Other methods rely on ATP as a marker of bacterial presence, which gives a relatively imprecise measurement of the presence of bacteria in oilfield water samples.

RAPID-B however uses unique physical characteristic "signatures" of bacteria, in addition to chemical reagents that bind only to bacterial DNA thus enumerating the number of viable bacteria in real time. Where onsite testing isn't possible, the samples will be sent to Vivione's Ph.D. staffed lab service, known as "Petro Chemical Bio-Diagnostics," a joint venture between Vivione and the Institute for Environmental Health, Inc. (IEH).

Petro Chemical Bio-Diagnostics provides a range of solutions to the Oil and Gas Industry, including Total Bacteria Count (TBC), post Bio -Treatment Efficacy Testing, (BET), SRB-specific real time Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR), and a comprehensive test showing all the bacteria in a given sample (including the individual species and percentages) known as the Well Characterization Test (WCT).