Students in CPG Win First Places in Global and Regional Competitions
June 15, 2020 | Research
A student team from the College of Petroleum Engineering & Geosciences won the second place in the worldwide competition for geoscience graduate students on 2020 “AAPG IBA 2020" .
The team, which won the first place in the Middle East were: Mohammad Naveed, Ignatius Argadestya, Mohamad Al-Dubais, and Fawaz Al-Qahtani; and supervised by the academic and industry mentors Dr. Khalid Al-Ramadan (KFUPM) and Dr. Mahdi AbuAli (Saudi Aramco).
The competition is about a project to evaluate an oil field, the possibility of its exploitation and to identify the suitable drilling sites using the latest exploration and drilling methods to interpret the geological and geophysical information provided by AAPG Foundation. The competition was scheduled to be held on the sidelines of the annual conference of The American Association of Petroleum Geologists in Houston, Texas from 7th to 10th June 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the competition was held remotely.
120 teams from universities around the world participated in the local competitions.12 teams were qualified for the global competition after an oral presentation through an online platform on last Friday and Saturday before a panel of arbitrators from international oil companies. The first place was achieved by the French Institute of Petroleum (Institut Français du Pétrole IFP).
Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Kaabi, Dean of the College of Petroleum Engineering and Geosciences pointed that this achievement reflects the university's reputation as a world-class center for teaching and research, the excellence of its students, as well as the excellence of the College’s program.
Our student team beat students from the six prestigious American universities, which qualified for the global competition and it is the first time, since the competition began in 2007, that a team from the Middle East has been placed the second. Dr. Al–Kaabi added.
On the other hand, two students from the Petroleum Engineering Department won the in the SPE Middle East & North Africa (MENA) Student Paper contest, which was recently organized by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). Mr. Ibrahim Goma won 1st place in the master’s division, and Mr. Amjad Hassan won the 2nd place in PhD division.
The Chairman of Petroleum Engineering Department, Dr. Dhafer Al-Shehri congratulated the two students for their achievement. He praised the quality of the research papers they submitted and competed with students from universities in the Middle East and North Africa region and won the first positions in this competition, where 2 students for each category participated in the contest.
He noted that the top three students in each category in the contest have been qualified for the SPE International Student Paper Contest to be held in Denver, Colorado, USA next October.
The international competition for research papers for students will be held during the annual conference of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (ATCE 2020), Dr. Al-Shehri added.
