Saturday 16 / November / 2024
Muscat: A group of ambitious students from the Department of Applied Geosciences at GUtech, along with their professors, recently beat other teams to win three different prizes in international competitions held in Manama, Bahrain.
GUtech participated in the prestigious Imperial Barrel Award (IBA) for the first time, and the five-member student team secured the third prize. A three-member team won the first prize in the EAGE geo-scientific quiz, and one GUtech student won the third prize in the student poster competition.
“For me, Geosciences are like being a doctor for rocks” said Atiya, who initially wanted to study Medicine, but then received a PDO (Petroleum Development Oman) scholarship for studies at GUtech. “From the rocks we can see the history, which is very fascinating for me,” said Ahlam, another GUtech student team member.
Thanks to six weeks of extremely intensive work, the GUtech student team won the bronze medal in the IBA competition. “We had to analyze a big seismic data set on wells, to study the chance of finding oil and gas in a vast area offshore New Zealand. At GUtech, we analyzed the data in the Schlumberger Laboratory, using sophisticated software packages.
During the conference we had to give a presentation before a panel of three experts from Aramco, Schlumberger and the regional AAPG president,” said the IBA team members.
“What is most fascinating about studying petroleum geosciences is that we can send seismic waves into the subsurface and from the reflected waves we can predict the chances of finding oil” said Haifa Al Salmi, lecturer at the Department of Applied Geosciences at GUtech. She coached the GUtech IBA team, together with Prof. Dr. Wiekert Visser, head of the Department of Petroleum Geosciences.
GUtech student Ahlam also received the third prize for her poster entitled, “Variations of Oil API Gravity across the Sultanate of Oman,” the result of her internship project at PDO. The poster was co-authored by Visser and Mohammed al Ghammari (PDO).
Ahlam gathered oil quality data from 1361 wells in Oman. “Lighter oil is found in the North of Oman and heavier oil in the South,” she explained. Out of the 100 posters that were submitted, only 10 were chosen for presentation before a panel of experts.
Finally, the GUtech student team made up of Sabra, Ahlam and Al Muhanna won the first prize in the Geosciences Quiz of the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers, out of 20 teams. As part of the prize, they received a travel grant to attend the EAGE convention in Vienna in May-June 2016.
“I think the conference was a great experience for us. There were many activities, such as the quiz, workshops on soft-skills and technical workshops. In the evening we also got a chance to speak with many professionals from the Middle East, who encouraged us to work in the oil and gas sector” said Sabra. Reflecting on their team spirit, Sabra said: “It was the first time for us to work together as a team.
“In my view, the key aspect of the IBA competition is that the students learnt a lot” said Visser.
All students of the team will graduate this year and could continue working in the oil and gas sector in Oman or pursue their MSc studies in Germany, at GUtech’s partner university, RWTH Aachen or elsewhere.
