Annually, the University of Southern California (USC) conducts a competition in which students can voluntarily apply for and compete against each other as teams. This competition, known as Chevron Engineering Week Competition, is organized and facilitated by the school in collaboration with Chevron. Once the students have formed their respective teams, they are presented with the project status and problem. This year the objective was to design an entire process, including upstream and downstream operations, for a heavy oil reservoir while considering environmental issues and minimizing energy consumption. Two EOR methods of steam injection and in-situ combustion, were given as options to be evaluated. There were 8 teams participating from the petroleum engineering department at USC to deliver a plan that constitutes recommendations to implement the optimum solution. Team G comprised of Ph.D. students from have successfully won the 1st place and were awarded the best design.
The students were (right to left): Ahmed Bubshait (team leader), Devang Dasani, Magdalene Ante, Rayan Dabloul, Mahshad Samnejad, Marjan Sherafati and Abdulrahman Bubshait.
The recommendations were presented to the Chevron management members, reservoir engineers and USC petroleum engineering department faculty. The audience praised the quality of the work.