A team of three Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS students won third place in the highly competitive 2016 EAGE Field Challenge, hosted by the European Association of Geologists and Engineers (EAGE) during the 78th EAGE Conference & Exhibition in Vienna. The three UTP students, all pursuing undergraduate degree in the petroleum geoscience and engineering department, were the first team from South East Asia region to be placed in the top three overall since the competition started. First place was taken by the Institut France Du Petrol (IFP) and second place was by Texas A&M, USA.
Grandika S. Primadani (Indonesia) - who is the ex-president of the AAPG student chapter at the school, Pua Ming Jia, and Mohd Shahrul Azhar (Malaysia), had only two months to assess a static and dynamic database and complete an evaluation an old basin producing for more than 80 years. The goal of this year’s challenge is to construct a field development plan for an oil field based on the data available after an initial exploration and appraisal phase in Vienna Basin which was provided by OMV.
The global final was an unforgettable and a challenging experience. The competition culminated in a 30-minute presentation to a panel of high level technical executives representing many oil companies. Mohammed Alfaraj, president of EAGE, was extremely impressed with the UTP team's achievement since they were the only undergraduate team in the 2016 Global Final.
60 teams fought for a position in the Field Challenge with only six making it to the final round – the IFP, Texas A&M, NTNU, Utrecht, and IIT Bombay.
Grandika mentions that it was one of the best learning experiences he had as an undergraduate student. He also adds that the eight-week experience forced the team to draw on all geoscience and engineering knowledge gained in class- from regional geology to field development plan.
We would like to thank the support of AP Lo Shyh Zung in Geoscience Department for providing valuable mentorship to the team.