Month: February 2019

by louise louise No Comments

SPE Aberdeen 2019 Student Bursary Award Winners Announced

We are delighted to announce the winners of our 2019 Student Bursary Awards.

Thank you to all the students who applied for the 2019 SPE Aberdeen student bursary awards. The judges were very impressed with the standard of applications which made for a challenging and rewarding process. The winners will be awarded at an awards ceremony, details of which will be announced soon. We received a large number of applications and if your name is not listed below then unfortunately your application wasn’t successful. However the Student Development committee would like to thank you for the time you invested in applying and we encourage you to apply for next year’s bursary programme.

 

The following winners are being awarded £3000 each:

Theresia Betty Sumarno University of Dundee
Xiang Shi Heriot-Watt University
Victoria Spooner Heriot-Watt University
Theodor Tufa University of Aberdeen
Yatin Suri Robert Gordon University

The following runners-up are being awarded £1000 each

Farhan Khan University of Aberdeen
Viktors Stepovojs University of Aberdeen
Ruissein Mahon Robert Gordon University
Adam Cawood University of Aberdeen
Ewan Campbell University of Aberdeen
Miftah Hidayat University of Aberdeen
Gillian Douglas Heriot-Watt University
Ugochukwu Nko Victor University of Dundee

The following students are being awarded £500 each:

Yakubu Balogun Robert Gordon University
Sam Head Heriot-Watt University
Emmanuel Eke Robert Gordon University
Alfredo Freites Heriot-Watt University
Aaron Tung University of Aberdeen
Joseph Sherratt University of Aberdeen
Kennedy Omoigui Robert Gordon University
Serveh Naderi Heriot-Watt University
Cameron Hogan University of Strathclyde
Christopher Ibeh University of Strathclyde
Gang Wang Heriot-Watt University
Odion Udebhulu Robert Gordon University
Suardi Nur University of Dundee
by david david No Comments

Chair’s Address – February 2019

Dear SPE Aberdeen members, colleagues and friends,

Last month the finalists of the 33rd Offshore Achievement Awards were announced, and the winners will be revealed at the ever popular black tie event on 14th March. The standard of entries this year was outstanding, leading to a challenging and rewarding judging process! Thanks to the outstanding support from our members and the wider community, this event, along with our other events, continue to go from strength to strength.  We use the modest surpluses that we make to give back to our community and to inspire the next generation of industry professionals, from primary school pupils to university students. This has always been a high priority for the section.

At this time of year pupils are making decision on subject choices and careers and our volunteers are very much in demand to attend careers events in school across Aberdeen city and shire to share their experience and expertise. We work closely with Aberdeen Science Centre on a number of projects; through ASC we roll out Energy4me, SPE’s global energy education programme, to schools across Scotland. Last summer we sponsored the Summer of Engineering, an event that ran for 6 weeks and attracted 5000 visitors; this will be repeated again in 2019. We also work closely with TechFest, supporting Maths in the Pipeline and TechFest Science Festival.

Next month we will be welcoming former NASA astronaut Carl Walz and NASA scientist Heather Paul to Aberdeen as part of the NASA in Aberdeen project, now in its 3rd year. Primary and secondary schools and the general public will have the opportunity to hear from the team at a variety of events. This hugely successful project is a collaboration with Energy Institute (EI) and the Society of Underwater Technology (SUT).

Our annual student bursary awards have been running for over 20 years supporting students studying oil and gas subjects. This year we are delighted to be in the position to award bursaries up to a total of £30,000 – the applications are being judged right now. We support five student chapters across Scotland and this support includes helping with transport costs to attend our events in Aberdeen and also offer substantial discounted rates at our events.

In addition to these ongoing projects we have also supported a number of “one off” projects over the years. These include funding exhibits at Aberdeen’s Maritime Museum to mark our 30th anniversary and supporting “Inside Industry”, a career guidance website, the only tool of its kind focused on providing first class oil and gas industry career information and advice, now in over 300 schools in Scotland. We also played a key role in developing a virtual tour of the Captain platform – a resource that is used widely in schools including TechFest’s Maths in the Pipeline. We also helped establish the Northsound 1 Energy Schools Challenge which has been running since 1997.

Supporting this wide range of activities and initiatives is completely dependent on our volunteers’ time, expertise and enthusiasm – I’d like to say a huge “Thank you” to them for their continued support. If you’d be interested in contributing to these great initiatives – or have other ideas on how we could do more, please get in touch at aberdeen.chair@spe-uk.org .

by louise louise No Comments

Industry Assistance Required Urgently for Student Projects at University of Aberdeen

Industry Assistance Required Urgently for Student Projects at University of Aberdeen

The University of Aberdeen is calling for help from industry for individual project for students on their undergraduate / postgraduate programme in petroleum engineering and the post graduate degree in reservoir engineering.

The PE undergraduate programme was launched in 2008, the MSc several years later. The RE MSc has been up and running for five years. Since their respective launches, all programmes have enjoyed a healthy degree of industry support in respect of projects and data sets. However, there are indications half way through this academic year (2018 – 2019) that a lack of industry projects could be an issue. The individual projects are not only fundamental to the award of the degree, they provide a platform for improved connection and communication between the university and the industry it serves.

Iain Percival, Honorary Professor, commented, ‘I spent 34 years working in Shell as a petroleum geologist and petroleum engineer culminating as the Shell group global chief petroleum engineer. An important part of the role was in recruitment. It was always obvious which students had benefited from an industry sponsored individual project. There was an obvious understanding of technical / business issues not so easily found in students who had not benefited from such an opportunity.

Over the years the industry in Aberdeen has played a crucial role in shaping the capabilities of the graduates required to staff the business. My appeal to the industry is for a continuation of this tradition. I appreciate that an investment of staff / supervisory time is required but there is a payback in terms of graduate caliber. The Wood report and subsequently established OGA emphasise the importance of improved inter company collaboration to impact operating costs, improved hydrocarbon recovery and effective utilization of shared infrastructure. Improved collaboration between the industry and the University of Aberdeen is equally important to the realization of the vision through the provision of a continuing stream of well qualified, “industry ready” graduates.’

The contact points for the degree programmes are:

Petroleum Engineering: Dr Lateef Akanji 01224 272793 l.akanji@abdn.ac.uk

Reservoir Engineering: Dr Mehrdad Manzari 01224 272976 mtmanzari@abdn.ac.uk