A few weeks ago, Meldrum Academy won the UK final of OilSim, the international oil&gas investment game.
In January, the pupils will face teams from five other countries, and perhaps two others remotely, for the top award.
The Aberdeenshire school will pitch against teams from Greenland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Faroe plus Canada and Kazakhstan, subject to sponsorship being secured.
Peter Hollstein, James Seller, Lorna MacMillan, all 17, and Ellyn Oliver, 16, battled it out against 120 pupils arranged in 30 other teams from secondary schools across the north-east of Scotland and Dundee to secure their position at the final. Runners-up were the Meldrum Academy team, Drilled, comprising Kenneth Wilson, Stuart Ingram, Mollie Simpson, plus Jennifer Simpson, and in third place was Dyce Academy’s DYC Drillers – Scott Keith, Rebecca Macaskill and Cameron Smith.
The objective of this online oil exploration competition, sponsored by Chevron Upstream Europe and Maersk Oil North Sea UK, is to play the role of an energy company entering a new petroleum province – and build a credible position.
Armed with $200million, they had to maximise the return on their investment by finding oil and/or gas, and investing in other teams’ opportunities.
The participants studied seismic and other surveys, bid for licences, competed to get rigs, contracted service providers and chose where to drill wells.
The two-day Scottish heat of OilSim was staged at Aberdeen Business School – The Robert Gordon University.
It was run by the Aberdeen arm of Faroes-headquartered training provider Simprentis, which created the novel business simulator model to be used in training courses and team-building events for oil&gas companies around the world.