Online Geo-Quiz coming up

28 February 2019

The geo-quiz is one of the main ESF competitions to challenge students on
their geoscientific knowledge and stimulate multi-disciplinary team work.
To have a chance of winning, teams should after all be able to answer a
wide variety of questions!

In addition to the geo-quizzes organised at events and student gatherings,
the fund also supports the online EAGE geo-quiz, a challenge specifically
created for student chapters. Last year, student chapter representatives
from Tomsk Polytechnic University, the University of Calgary and Cracow
University were the winners of the online geo-quiz.

Online geo-quiz for Student Chapters

Participation to the online quiz is open to all registered EAGE Student
Chapters. All chapter members can chip in to answer the questions,
competing to become one of the three highest scoring student chapters.

The three highest scoring teams will receive financial support from the ESF
to send three chapter representatives to attend the 81st EAGE Annual
Conference and Exhibition. This year, the conference takes place from 3-6
June 2019 in London, UK. The winning teams will also take part in the
global geo-quiz taking place during the London conference and compete
with more than fifty other teams in a chance to become the global winner.

Registration and participation

All student chapter representatives will receive an invitation to register for the online Geo-quiz on 11 March. Chapter interested in participating should register by 15 March.

During the quiz you and your team will have to answer 20 multiple choice
questions within a 25 minutes time frame. Once time is up, the quiz will
automatically close. For that reason, make sure to be both fast and have a
stable internet connection!

Remember to work together and may the best student chapters win!

Good luck!

Happy birthday to… us!

25 February 2019

It is exactly ten years to the day the EAGE Student Fund was founded. Since
its inception, the ESF has been able to provide thousands of students with
support, knowledge and learning opportunities worldwide.

We will celebrate this milestone with a variety of activities and publications
over the course of the year. Make sure to look out for the ESF in First Break,
social media and at conferences for our activities!

ESF@10 – get involved

The ESF is only able to work towards its mission through the support of our
sponsors. The support received from both companies and individuals is
crucial and we therefore thank our supporters tremendously.

The fund is looking forward to continuing our mission in the upcoming
decade. In order to do so, we need the support from our community:

Make a donation today
Become a company supporter
Donate your time as a volunteer

New chapter begins for students at Curtin University

21 February 2019

The New Year has ushered in a new EAGE student chapter at Curtin
University, Perth, Australia. This follows six months of rigorous effort by
the student community working in the exploration geophysics and
petroleum engineering disciplines at Western Australia School of Mines
(WASM), Curtin University. The result has been the successful opening of
a student chapter in collaboration with EAGE.

Inauguration new student chapter

The inauguration was held on 17 January 2019 in the presence of the
student chapter office bearers, other faculty members and students of the
university. Prof Andrej Bona, who acts as the faculty advisor of EAGE Curtin
University Student Chapter, conveyed his best wishes for the success of the
chapter. Partha Pratim Mandal, the president of the Chapter said: ‘This is
one of the chapters thoroughly dedicated to geosciences where the student
will get direct benefit through connection with global geoscientists and
engineers.”

The present office bearer team members (Nilesh Kumar Jha, Mohammad
Atif Iqbal, Zixing Qin and Gonzalo Ceron) and Alexy Yurikov (research
scholar, exploration geophysics) contributed significantly in the
chapter formation and inauguration event. Introductory speeches at the
ceremony were given by Sofya Popik, PhD student, exploration geophysics
and Lukman Johnson, PhD student, Petroleum Engineering. They all
extolled the merits of ESF and the value of the EAGE chapter to students.

Both talks were very relevant to present ongoing geoscience research
activities such as the implications of CO2 injection and unconventional
resource exploration.

Curtin University and the ESF

Curtin University students say the vision of the chapter is to engage with
local and global industry as well other geoscience organization such as
ASEG, PESA, SPE and SEG through organizing technical events, and
workshops as well as mentoring and other relevant activities which directly
benefit students to achieve their future goals. The mission of the
chapter is to narrow the communication between students, industry and
research organizations and provide opportunities for students to enhance
their technical and professional skills.

Curtin University is Western Australia’s largest and most culturally diverse
university with Australia’s third largest international student population. It
is ranked in the top 1% of universities worldwide in the Academic Ranking
of World Universities 2018. The ESF is happy to welcome the university’s
involvement and is looking forward to help its students to gain new skills
and opportunities.

ESF supports excursion TU Bergakademie Freiberg

14 February 2019

On Sunday 25 November 2018 15 students from the TU Bergakademie Freiberg set out for Vienna
to visit OMV in Austria. Most of them are upcoming geophysicists in the Bachelor or Master
programme. The excursion had been planned by the EAGE Student Chapter Freiberg with and was made possible through the EAGE Student Fund. The
ESF is therefore happy to share the experiences of the students through this
report.

Report TU Bergakademie Freiberg

The main purpose of getting profound insights into seismic hydrocarbon
and geothermal exploration
by means of vibrator trucks. In addition, the excursion also provided students the chance to experience the dimensions of industry
surveys and furthermore, to establish personal contacts to OMV and ask specific questions
regarding our field of expertise. The following morning, on Monday 26^th November, our study
trip started in Strasshof. After an introduction and safety instructions we were led into
a workshop where defective geophones are repaired or simply recharged. As the geophones
do not transfer data in real time they have to be brought from the field to the workshop and
then manually read out. Each day quite a few terabytes of data are recorded so lots of memory
space is required.

A company presentation was given next and while enjoying some coffee and sweets
we found out more about the project: To ensure the security of gas supply in the future,
OMV performs seismic measurements north of Vienna as an extension of the survey area
already covered via 3D seismic earlier this year in Schönkirchen. Covering an area of 1,100 km²
it represents the largest seismic exploration in Austria so far.

Following the presentation, we moved out into the field by car to a geophone station
which consists of 12 or 24 in-line geophones that are permanently recording during working hours,
which are connected to a flash drive. In total, 720,000 geophones are placed around a perimeter
of several kilometres. Even at a distance of 4km they are able to detect seismic waves generated
by the fleet of vibro-trucks which we were allowed to visit next.

The most fascinating part of the field trip was witnessing the power such a vehicle can release
into the earth. Standing close by, it felt like an earthquake was rattling the ground beneath
our feet. Maximally four troops of three vibrators operate at least 400m apart with a
time delay of 20s. Using the slip-sweep technique almost 8km² can be measured daily.
The target of this measurement were geological formations containing gas or hydrothermal fluids,
which are located at a depth between 4 and 6 km. At the same time, Peak Particle Velocity
measurements ensure a destruction-free exploration without damaging buildings.
Generally, OMV values Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE) and respects the choices
of landowners.

After lunch, we stopped by at the Recording Truck. Each vibrator transmits its exact position
to the truck, so the coordinators know where the exploration crew is located and can give
proper instructions. Each measurement point is registered in their system so the progress
can be monitored.

The trip was concluded by a visit of the Noise Monitoring Truck. On a fixed line several geophones
record the noise triggered for example by a storm. These geophones transmit the data
instantly to the truck. That way a measurement can be put to a stop at once if the background
noise exceeds a certain level.

In the end we left OMV after a very exciting day. All in all, we received a lot of new information,
could ask specific questions and got an impression what it means to work for OMV.
As a part of our course of study in Freiberg, we regularly participate in smaller scale
seismic surveys and it was impressive to experience a seismic survey at such an enormous
scale. It allowed us to get insights into the industry’s ways of handling such a large project.

Many thanks to OMV for this interesting excursion and to our sponsors: EAGE Student Fund,
Verein Freunde und Förderer der TU Bergakademie (VFF) and TU Freiberg’s Institute of Geophysics!

Field work and the ESF

Throughout the course of the year, the EAGE Student Fund supports a
number of field
work projects. The fund is looking for new initiatives where a limited donation directly
helps with the realisation of the excursion.

Second round qualifiers named in the LDC

7 February 2019

The Laurie Dake Challenge, previously known as the Field Challenge, is a fully integrated evaluation and
development task that challenges students to simulate a real industry activity. The challenge requires
cooperation between students and various disciplines, and is one of the main ESF supported activities
over the years.
In the first phase of the challenge, students will have to assess the prospectivity of an area
based on relatively sparse and limited data: it will be essential to understand the ‘backbone’
of the regional geology, to analyze the petroleum system(s) to evaluate its (their) probability of
being functional, and to describe the trapping mechanism that could lead to a promising prospect!
In the second phase, a relatively large amount of data and participants will need to ponder their
analysis by acknowledging the uncertainties which affect their work.
We celebrate the selection on the best ten entries. The remaining candidates will receive a
comprehensive dataset in the second phase of selection, which will allow teams to investigate
much more subtle relationships between the data in order to better characterize their reservoir.
The ten teams moving on the next stage of the competition are:
IFP School, France;
Dalhousie University, Canada;
Curtin University, Australia;
University Gadjah Mada( team 2), Indonesia;
Fluminense Federal University, Brazil;
Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia;
University of Stavanger, Norway;
Petroleum University of Technology (PUT), Iran;
Tomsk Polytechnic University, Russia;
and Mexican Institute of Petroleum, Mexico.
This contest would not be possible without the support of BP supporting the challenge with
the challenging dataset, as well as the Students Affairs Committee who worked hard to
prepare the 2019 Laurie Dake Challenge.

Student Lecture Tours – request for proposals

31 January 2019

Student Lecture Tours allow students to participate in a half-day course
taught by expert geoscientists. In 2018 the ESF supported tours in Europe
and Asia Pacific, resulting in lectures at 12 different universities.

Declaration of interest 2019

In order to gain support from the ESF, a student tour requires a declaration
of interest from several universities from the same region. This proposal
can come from both the university itself or a student chapter willing to
organise the lecture. The ESF accepts hosting applications throughout the
year. However, we recommend universities and chapters to make these
declarations well before the start of the academic year.

Learn more about becoming an SLT host.

A declaration of interest to host does not automatically mean the ESF will
award the request as it depends on the availability of the lecturer, topic
and interests of other universities in the same country or region.

If approved, the ESF support covers fee and travel costs of the
instructor. It cannot make contributions to catering, room rental or
equipment for the lecture.

Student Lecture Tour at the University of Leoben, Austria

Laurie Dake Challenge 2019 awaits for your participation!

NEWS! Join the Laurie Challenge

UPDATE: the call for participants for the Laurie Dake Challenge has been
closed. Make sure to join us for the finals at the EAGE Annual in London,
June 2019!

We are already looking forward to meeting the best of our student community at the next year’s finals in London!