UNL graduate students beat Oklahoma in petroleum basin contest

A team of University of Nebraska-Lincoln geosciences graduate students won first place in the Midwest regional heat of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists' Imperial Barrel Award competition at the University of Tulsa April 4. They beat out four teams, including last year's international champion, the University of Oklahoma.

"This is a highly competitive international competition in which a team of graduate students works up a professional evaluation of a petroleum basin using very sophisticated research techniques and complex geological and geophysical data," said Priscilla Grew, director of the University of Nebraska State Museum and chair of AAPG's Global Climate Change Committee. "Winning the regional competition is a big honor for our students and faculty in geosciences, and will certainly capture the attention of petroleum industry recruiters."

This is the first year UNL has competed for the International Barrel Award. Team members Brian Blackstone of Casper, Wyo., Charles Kittinger "Kit" Clark of Pasadena, Calif., Jessica Pritchard of Spring, Texas, and Matthew Corbett of Boston brought home $3,000 in prize money from the Tulsa competition. They will compete against 11 other teams in the international finals at the AAPG annual convention in Denver in June.

"The amount of time invested in this was significant," said geosciences professor Chris Fielding, faculty adviser for the team. "As with anything, what you get out of the whole experience is proportional to what you put in. These students must have devoted every spare minute they had in the last two months to this work."

The AAPG Imperial Barrel Award is an annual basin/prospect evaluation competition for geosciences graduate students. The program is rigorous and contributes to AAPG's mission of promoting petroleum geoscience training and advancing geoscience students. University teams analyze a dataset in the eight weeks prior to their regional competition and deliver their results to a panel of industry experts.