Annual Report 2011: FY July 1, 2010-June 30, 2011
Imperial Barrel Award
Graphic by Mike Mahafee
The 2010 version of the AAPG Imperial Barrel Award (AAPG IBA) is the fifth edition of the program. It started in 2007 with a seven-team experiment at the Annual Convention in Long Beach, California. In the 2010 program, 94 schools from 23 countries compete to represent each AAPG Region and AAPG Section as one of the 12 finalist teams at the Annual Convention in Houston.
The program is based upon a real world scenario simulation. Teams of graduate students (with some exceptions) receive a datasets from the AAPG, which contains seismic, well data, and some geoscience reference materials. Teams can only use the materials given to them and as a team, they take the raw data and in eight weeks, must be able to present a professional technical evaluation and recommendation to drill or not drill to a panel of professional judges. This is a real world program in that it strives to give the students exposure to team dynamics, deadlines, challenging data, and a multitude of the real problems and solutions that geoscientists face in the practice of their professional career.
The program continues to evolve and changes occur each year. For 2010, schools that were not able to field a complete team can now merge with other schools in their region or section to form a cooperative team and Committee revealed a new webpage (www.aapg.org/iba).
Financially, the program started in 2007 with a few sponsors and with their support and that of the AAPG Foundation and Executive Committees, the program has reached a point of fiscal stability. The current program stands on its own efforts, (and though 2010 numbers are pending final review) and enjoys over $600,000 in global sponsorship from a large variety of enthusiastic corporate and individual sponsors. Costs are just below that number as the committee uses all funding it can to support and increase the number of schools in the program.
We thank all those who have and continue to sponsor this challenging educational experience and invite all those who wish to hear the results created by the program from the post-contestants themselves on the “Your IBA Experience” on the IBA webpage.
Finally, we congratulate all the IBA teams that participated in the 2011 AAPG IBA Program, the Region and Section winners who participated in the IBA finals program in Houston, and the top three winners of the competition. They were: Third Place: Sultan Qaboos University – Oman; Second Place: University of Southampton – UK; and First Place: The University of Texas at Austin – USA.
IBA Committee: Steven Veal, Ken Nemeth, Kay Pitts, Bob Stewart, Dr. Tim Berge, Mike Mahafee, Connie Mongold, and Cameron Campbell. We also thank and acknowledge the Region and Section 2011 AAPG IBA Coordinators: Anwar Al Beaiji, Carlos SantaCruz, Brian Brister, Kim Parsons, Charlotte Hamilton, Victor Ramirez, Morgan Sullivan, Helen Cromie, Tony Kolodziej, David Dolph, Janice Gregory-Sloan, Ong Hock Kim, Wasiu Odufisan, and Lee Avary. We also thank the AAPG staff liaison Mike Mlynek, our webmaster Bogdan Michka, and all members who give of their time and effort to volunteer to help organize, judge, or mentor in the 2011 AAPG IBA program.
Steven Veal, Chair
Committee members:
Timothy Bryan S. Berge P.G., Cameron Denney Campbell, Michael James Mahaffie, Connie Lynn Mongold, Kenneth Eugene Nemeth, James Michael Party, Kay L. Pitts, Norman Robert Stewart Jr., and Steven Loring Veal