  In this work we investigate the advantages of multiscale methods in
Petrov-Galerkin (PG) formulation in a general framework. The framework is based
on a localized orthogonal decomposition of a high dimensional solution space
into a low dimensional multiscale space with good approximation properties and
a high dimensional remainder space{, which only contains negligible fine scale
information}. The multiscale space can then be used to obtain accurate Galerkin
approximations. As a model problem we consider the Poisson equation. We prove
that a Petrov-Galerkin formulation does not suffer from a significant loss of
accuracy, and still preserve the convergence order of the original multiscale
method. We also prove inf-sup stability of a PG Continuous and a Discontinuous
Galerkin Finite Element multiscale method. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the
Petrov-Galerkin method can decrease the computational complexity significantly,
allowing for more efficient solution algorithms. As another application of the
framework, we show how the Petrov-Galerkin framework can be used to construct a
locally mass conservative solver for two-phase flow simulation that employs the
Buckley-Leverett equation. To achieve this, we couple a PG Discontinuous
Galerkin Finite Element method with an upwind scheme for a hyperbolic
conservation law.
