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The 2018 PetroBowl championship in Dallas Texas is over. The team from KAUST made it farther than any team from the Middle East and North Africa region since the competition began over a decade ago, making it to the elite eight. Teammates Syed T. Haider, Ahmed S. Hassan, Ryan K. Santoso, and Wardana Saputra, all PhD students at ANPERC, beat Anton de Kom Universiteit and the University of New South Wales. KAUST's team lost to two-time PetroBowl champions University of Texas at Austin, who went on to take third place. In the final round, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México beat Louisiana State University in a heated match. SPE's twitter and Facebook accounts live streamed the event, showing a very excited crowd during the last few rounds.

Prizes include scholarships from SPE sponsors, and the whole event was a unique opportunity to network with industry professionals. As Wardana Saputra says: "In the middle of the competition, we had a chance to meet the chairman of SPE student outreach KSA, Meshal A. Al-Amri from Saudi Aramco. He was pleased that we made a new record as the first team ever from MENA region to reach the elite eight of PetroBowl … In Addition, all PetroBowl finalists had a complete access to the ATCE sessions that gave us valuable chance to the high-quality technical presentations from E&P professionals which may be closely related with our current research at KAUST. After all, the whole process of PetroBowl from the preparation up to the competition has benefited us to improve our skill and knowledge in Petroleum Engineering."

The team travelled to Dallas with the full financial and emotional support of their professors and fellow students back at KAUST. Saputra points out that "we would like to acknowledge the Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) division of KAUST for fully sponsoring KAUST SPE PetroBowl team. We also received big supports from the Ali I. Al-Naimi Petroleum Engineering Research Center and Energy Resources and Petroleum Engineering (ERPE) Program at KAUST. We really appreciate big help from Prof. Tadeusz Patzek and Prof. Hussein Hoteit who were directly training and coaching us to be well-prepared on PetroBowl. The last but not least, we thank the SPE Student Chapter at KAUST for the continuous support for our team."

To learn more about PetroBowl, visit the SPE's website here.