We established a novel laboratory system to investigate biodegradation of Macondo oil dispersions (10 µm or 30 µm median droplet sizes) at low oil concentrations (2 mg L-1) in coastal Norwegian seawater at a temperature of 4-5°C. Metagenomic analyses were performed on 0.5 - 1 µg whole extracted DNA using Illumina HiSeq 100 bp paired end reads.