Abstract:[Objective]Establishing a new method of microbial prospecting for oil and gas based on microbial community metabolic function. [Methods]In this study,45 shallow reservoir soil samples and 25 non-reservoir soil samples were collected. Carbon catabolic activity of the microbial community was measured by biolog microplate,and microbial anomaly of reservoir was judged by discriminant function. [Result]We screened 10 typical carbon sources of 95 carbon sources which could reflect the differences of reservoir and non-reservoir soil microbial community structure and made the validation test set to experimental zone and controlled zone samples using the discriminant function. The discriminate rate of reservoir and non-reservoir were 97. 8% and 100% respectively and the overall accuracy was 98.6%.[Conclusion] Biolog technology provided a highly efficient and precise method for preliminarily predicting oil and gas reservoir.