They did it! On Friday, March 25, Team Fair Way became the European champion of the Imperial Barrel Award (IBA), the competition of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG).

Domitille de Hauteclocque, Catherine Du Reau, Matthieu Dadou, Alexandre Sarrere and Côme Savignat, all 5th year students in geology, specializing in energy resources, succeeded in raising the Lasallian star to the top of Europe in this competition which reveals the future professionals of the petroleum exploration and exploitation sector.

An intense challenge

During this competition, which began last January, the team worked for two months on an exploration data set located off the Faroe Islands. Geological and geophysical studies, terrain analysis, infrastructure required for exploitation, compilation of bibliographic references; all the necessary data were sifted through in order to convince the jury composed of professionals in the sector. New for this 2022 edition, the students had to integrate a sustainable development component into their work.

To achieve this result, the team first qualified in the pool phase, before meeting the best European teams from the universities of Eötvös Loránd (Budapest - Hungary), degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (Naples - Italy), Camerino (Camerino - Italy), Stavanger (Stavanger - Norway), and UniBuc (Bucharest - Romania) the following day.

The final in sight

The future engineers now have their sights set on the United States. In September, the Fair Way team will fly to Houston, Texas, for the IBA world final, which will pit all the continental winners against each other. The twelve teams selected will have to present their prospective project in front of a jury of oil industry professionals.

This is the second time that a Lasallian team has won the title for the European zone. The last continental title was won in March 2019, with the team of Agathe Ripoll, Anatole Gobetti, Jean Bakala, Romain Benier and Thomas Pichancourt. A high-flying performance confirmed at the IBA world final with the second highest step of the podium.

This recurring presence of UniLaSalle students at this level of competition underlines the quality of the skills acquired by the future engineers during their five years of training. These results are to the credit of the entire Geosciences College, and more particularly to Julien Bailleul, teacher-researcher in sedimentary geology and basin analysis, who supervises the Lasallian teams involved each year.

See you in September for the next part of the adventure!