The competition held in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia in March 25 2016 was a smart competition carrying the theme of energy and petroleum engineering. This competition was attended by 22 universities from across Asia Pacific countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, India, and China. Held together along with this event was the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) Asia, a conference about new technologies in offshore petroleum industry.

Specifically in that OTC Asia 2016, a representative from ITB, Ichsan Aljabbar, was chosen to deliver a paper presentation entitled Severe Formation Damage Due to Solids Invasion for Inclined/Horizontal Wells with High Permeability Zone. This paper is a study about the alternative way to predict the event of drilling mud entry to the rock formation around the drilling hole. The approach used in this paper is numerical approach because the measurement cannot be easily done in direct measurement in the field.

Sweat and Tears Finally Paid Off

The road to success is not always a smooth path. That also happened to the ITB team's effort before and during the competition. At the early stage of the competition, Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) ITB SC conducted internal selection to find the best five participants to represent ITB. The selection was not easy, because the participant must excel in the written test, and after that, the participants were narrowed down into top seven for the question and answer test until the best five is chosen to represent ITB. For a month, ITB team practiced intensively twice a week to prepare for the competition. "We learned by ourselves, and during the training, we got help from SPE ITB to simulate the real competition situation", Chintya, one of the team members, stated.

The struggle during the competition was as hard as it was before the competition, seeing other tough competitors from universities in Asia Pacific. But, this did not make them afraid. Contrary to that, ITB team managed to triumph by winning against the Palawan State University (PSU) of Philippines in the top 16 round, and after that they went straight to the next round after beating the Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) of Malaysia. In the next two rounds, ITB faced two teams from Indonesia, which were Universitas Indonesia (UI) and Universitas Trisakti teams. The final victory against Trisakti sealed the first place title for ITB team, which also smoothed the path for ITB to compete in international Petrobowl ATCE which will be conducted in September at Dubai. ITB will represent the Asia Pacific region, and will compete against the five other regions from all over the world: Middle East, Africa, North America, Europe, South America, and Caribbean.

Chintya confessed that the victory in Kuala Lumpur was something that she did not expect, as their competitors were quite tough. The time and energy sacrificed were finally paid off by the experiences they got. "We got the knowledge from new friends from other countries," she said. Chintya hoped that ITB team will always win this competition for years to come and there will always be team regeneration. "The tips for the future teams are don't be afraid to try, don't be afraid to lose, be confident, practice a lot, and pray. Wish us a luck and victory in Dubai!," she said concluding the interview.

Aldy Kurnia R
Irfaan TR
ITB Journalist Aprentice