Budding school pupils across the north-east are embarking on a challenge to launch their own fictional oil fields.
Teams from 16 secondary schools across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire are competing in this year’s STEM in the Pipeline competition.
Held annually by TechFest, it gives students an insight into the careers available in oil and gas by making them draw on their skills in physics, maths, chemistry and geology.
This year the teams will have to produce a Field Development Plan for a fictional oil field, working with professional and academic mentors to complete tasks including detailing subsurface work and calculating carbon dioxide emissions.
They will then present their plans to a panel at BP’s North Sea headquarters in Dyce, Aberdeen, in December.
Alies Bartelds, acting managing director of TechFest, said: “We are very excited to launch STEM in the Pipeline to a new group of secondary school pupils who over the coming months will get to experience what it’s like to work in the oil and gas industry.
“The programme is a great opportunity for young people to apply their knowledge and skills into solving a problem relevant to the energy sector, so they get a real feel for the industry and the opportunity to develop their interpersonal and team skills.
“Along with the support of mentors and industry professionals, some of whom took on the challenge themselves over the past twelve years, the students will come together in small teams and each spend more than 40 extracurricular hours working on their project, which they will then present to the judges in December.
“Every year we are blown away by the amount of consideration and dedication demonstrated by the pupils involved and we are already looking forward to seeing their ideas in a few months’ time.”
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