CSULB Students compete in Imperial Barrel Competition

The American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)'s annual meeting in Long Beach, April 1-4 brings a special opportunity for the CSULB students in GEOL 471, Petroleum Geology and Well Log Analysis. They traditionally learn petroleum exploration through lecture and case studies with "canned" lab exercises. This year's class, composed by of both graduate and undergraduate students has the unique opportunity for the equivalent of on-the-job-training as they compete with a dozen other university graduate student teams from around the world for the prestigious Imperial Barrel Award.

The competition, a 30-year tradition at Imperial College in London, England is the accumulation of a team project assessment of the petroleum potential of a basin. Teams of 4-6 students were provided with a real-life 3D seismic data set and will have a few weeks to complete a technical assessment of the basin's petroleum plays and prospects. On Friday, March 30, 2007, prior to the convention, teams will give a thirty-minute PowerPoint presentation of their work with recommendations for future activity. A panel of industry experts will judge the technical work and presentations. The results of the competition will be announced at the Student Reception on April 2, 2007, and the top three teams will win generous cash prizes. This is the first time that the competition has been opened to outside teams.

The CSULB student team, led by Drs. Richard Behl and R. Dan Francis, are the only combined undergraduate and graduate level student team enrolled, and the only team from California. They are competing against teams comprised of students in petroleum geology graduate programs from around the world. While they don't expect to walk away with the top prize, CSULB students welcome the challenge to work with a simulated real-life situation.

In addition to mentoring the GEOL 471 students at the AAPG Meeting, Richard Behl is on the convention planning committee as poster session co-chair, organizing more than 600 research poster presentations, and also as president of the Pacific Section of the Society for Sedimentary Geology. In addition, Greg Holk and Dan Francis were asked to lend their expertise to running geological field trips associated with the meeting.