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				UL Geology Students win regional Imperial Barrel Award!



				The first place winning team in the GCAGS Imperial Barrel contest was University of Louisiana at Lafayette! Shown here is academic advisor Dr. Brian Lock, John Rosen, Fleur Bases, John Salsbury, and Derek Hargrave. This team will compete for the top Imperial Barrel award at the AAPG Annual Meeting in San Antonio which will include national and international teams.
				The Imperial Barrel Award
				The local geological societies in the Gulf Coast Region, including the Lafayette Geological Society (LGS), are affiliated societies of the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies (GCAGS), which doubles as the Gulf Coast Section of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). You may have read in recent issues of the AAPG Explorer about the Imperial Barrel Award, named after Imperial College, London, where the concept originated. This is a competition, open not only to all AAPG Student Chapters, but any interested university with a geology/geophysics department. The premise is that each participating team (limited to one from each university) consists of up to five students, a faculty advisor, and an industry advisor/mentor. The team members should be master degree candidates or PhD candidates with less than two years of post graduate work. Undergraduates can participate, but may be at a disadvantage to do so. Team members are eligible to participate only one time and compete for cash prizes for their departments, $20,000 at the global level. This is the first year that AAPG has undertaken to have the contest take place at the section/region level. Originally 46 teams (globally) signed up to participate in the contest. However, because of the late start (November) and early deadline (March 15) to complete the contest, many more universities who considered participating could not. It should be recognized that this contest is not a minor task – an enormous amount of time and effort was needed to complete the project, with team members devoting extra hours and weekends for their interpretation and research. During the course of our (Gulf Coast) section contest, one team had to drop out when most of its team members could not continue because of course and personal demands. The first round of competition is at the Section and International Region level. GCAGS administered and was the primary sponsor for our section contest. The competition was hosted in Houston by GCAGS and organized by Ken Nemeth, this year’s GCAGS President. Schlumberger Information Solutions and Schlumberger’s Breakthrough Team Performance Center provided venues in their training center with really “state-of-the-art” presentation facilities for judging and final practices. They also assisted with lodging and meals. Cash awards made to the participating teams were subsidized by donations from the New Orleans, Lafayette, Shreveport, East Texas, Houston and Gulf Coast Geological Societies. Data were sent to the teams in mid-January and came from part of the Norwegian North Sea or from Australia (two different data sets were utilized). The teams interpreted the data on systems available to the university. If they did not have software, sponsoring companies made software available to them (Landmark, Kingdom, Petrel, GeoFrame, etc.). They received a huge quantity of information that needed to be analyzed; well logs, two-D and three-D seismic data, core information, and geochemical data from an area of the world where oil and gas are produced. Additionally, students were permitted to use other resources to enhance their presentations such as literature researches, Google Earth, etc. The instructions were for the students to work as a team exactly as an Asset Team would for a major oil company would. They were required to analyze the data and make recommendations with justifications - "drill here", or "shoot more seismic there", or "don't invest further in this area", and so on. The teams were required to make a presentation to judges from the oil industry, each team member giving about five minutes of the presentation. By last week, the surviving teams were University of Louisiana, Lafayette; University of Houston; and Stephen F. Austin State University. The UL team took first place and will represent the GCAGS at the Global Finals to be held in San Antonio in April, at the AAPG Annual Convention. There they will compete against the winning teams from the other sections of AAPG, the International Regions, Imperial College (the founder of the contest), and last year’s winner, the University of Aberdeen. The UL team consists of John Rosen (team leader), Fleur Bases, Derek Hargrave and John Salsbury. AAPG will cover transportation, lodging, and registration for all teams and one faculty advisor participating in the global finals in San Antonio. The top three teams will receive cash awards that will be presented to their departments. The organizers and sponsors of the contest should be thanked for putting together the arrangements at such short notice, and the teams should all be congratulated for their hard work and professional presentations. Volunteers are needed for next year ’s committee. If interested, please contact the GCAGS.

Document last revised Monday, March 24, 2008 12:19 PM