2015 APOGCE PETROBOWL

RULES AND REGULATIONS

General Rules and Regulations

A. Eligibility
a. Competition is open to any SPE student chapter/club in good standing with SPE
International.
b. All competition participants must be student members of their universitys SPE student
chapter.
c. All universities must submit completed registration forms and letter of indemnity for the
event.
d. There is no cost to participate in PetroBowl event.
e. Participating teams are responsible for logistical costs and getting to APOGCE. There is no
registration cost to join this competition. SPE does not subsidize nor sponsor teams.
B. Communications
a. All presentations, verbal communications, written documentation and the competition itself
will be in English.
b. Any comments, correction, and/or clarifications regarding to the PetroBowl rules must be
submitted via email by 9 October 2015 to the following email address:
lucky_bagus@cnooc.co.id
C. Rule Changes
Competition rules are subject to change. Any rule changes, clarifications, and/or addenda will be
announced to all participating universities and during the team meeting before the competition.

Competition Rules
A. Game Format
a. The games will be single elimination in which three teams compete and the winning team
(team with most points at end of the round) will advance to the next round.
b. There will be up to three rounds of competition. See Figure at the end of document.
B. Tournament Officials
a. Judges: Each game will have three judges. All judge decisions concerning compliance to
the rules and awarding of points will be final.
b. Moderator: Each game will have moderator. There will be up to two moderators to share
the responsibility. The moderator(s) will read the questions, consult judges as needed to
determine the correctness of answers, award and deduct points, and otherwise enforce
the rules of competition.
c. Scorekeeper: Each game will have at least one scorekeeper. The scorekeeper(s) will keep
the official score and individual statistics. Games will not be considered final until the
scorekeeper has declared the official score.
d. Timekeeper: Each game will have one timekeeper. The timekeeper will enforce time limits
and supervise the game clock.
C. Equipment
a. All games will be played such that each participant in the current game has a "buzzer"
an electronic device that determines which participant buzzes in to answer a question
first.
i. Each participant is responsible for monitoring whether his or her own buzzer
is operating properly throughout the game.
ii. If a buzzer malfunctions, it is the participants responsibility to alert PetroBowl
officials immediately. PetroBowl officials will then stop the competition and
attempt to reproduce the alleged buzzer malfunction. Only the current tossup question or the last completed toss-up question can be replayed, subject
to the moderators ruling that the malfunction impacted play of that question.
iii.

If the buzzer system is ultimately deemed to be inoperable by the Moderator,

an alternative method (such as the table slap method) may be used. Teams
will be fully briefed on the protocol of any such methods by the Moderator
before proceeding.
b. Timed games will use a clock clearly visible to both teams.
c. Participants will be provided paper and pencils.

d. Calculators will be provided. To ensure fairness, competitors will use only the provided
calculators.
e. Participants may not use reference materials during the game.
D. Participants
a. Team consists of up to 3 players from a single university who meet all eligibility
requirements.
b. Students from all year levels are eligible for competition. It is strongly recommended that
each team be comprised of a diverse set of first to final year students to ensure continued
participation in future PetroBowl competitions. Yet, this recommendation is considered
Best Practice and therefore shall not be required.
c. Teams must identify a team captain at the time of registration. The team captain shall be
responsible for all team-related decisions and any correspondence with the PetroBowl
committee.
d. Players and universities are responsible for any liability arising from their conduct while at
the tournament. Any purposeful act of dishonesty or an act which does not conform to
the spirit of the competition, observed by any tournament official, will be considered
cause for expulsion from the competition. Please refer to Ethics and Conduct section.
E. Time
a. Tardiness of more than 5 minutes from the scheduled match time may result in a forfeit,
unless the lateness is the fault of the tournament, or the tournament officials are satisfied
with other good cause.
b. In all rounds, the clock starts when the moderator begins reading the first toss-up
question. The time structure of each round is as follows:
i. All rounds before the Elite Eight will consist of half games of 8-minutes with
no intermission.
ii.

In the Elite Eight and Final Four rounds, each game will consist of two 8minutes halves with a brief intermission between them.
The Championship and Third Place rounds will consist of two 10-minute

iii.

halves with a brief intermission between them.

c. When the clock sounds the end of time, the half or game shall end, except in the following
scenarios:
i. A player who has buzzed in on a toss-up question is allowed to answer that
toss-up and, if correct, earns a bonus question. If incorrect, the half or game
ends without the other team having a change to answer the toss-up question.

ii. A team will be read its entire bonus question, even if time expires during the
bonus or before the bonus is read.
d. The team with more points at the end of the game wins. In the event of a tie:
i. There will be an overtime period consisting of three toss-up questions.
Bonuses are not used in overtime.
ii. If the game is still tied after three toss-up questions, moderator will read tossup questions until the score changes.
e. The clock shall not stop, except:
i. When stopped by a tournament official to resolve a serious problem or to
replace a question.
ii. At the end of the half or game
iii. When a moderator needs extra questions because of replacement of
questions or overtime.
f. The time clock used by the time keeper is the official time and is not contestable.
F. Questions
a. Each game uses 1) toss-up questions worth 10 points each, and 2) bonus questions, worth
up to 20 points each.
i. Team receives a bonus question for each toss-up question correctly answered
by one of its players (except in overtime).
b. Questions are randomly selected from a question bank of pre-screened new questions
(not used in the past years competition). If, during the competition, the question bank is
depleted, the moderator may resort to using back-up questions which could consist of
questions from previous competitions.
c. Questions are intended to test the contestants knowledge of petroleum engineering and
the petroleum industry. Questions may include history, trivia, current events, technical
questions, calculations, and problem solving.
d. Suggested (but not all inclusive) list of study materials as possible sources of questions:
i. Academic: Technical, Fundamentals of Petroleum Engineering
1. Content from SPEs PetroWiki: www.petrowiki.org
2. Petroleum Engineering and related (Geology, Reservoir Engineering,
etc.) textbooks.
3. Glossary of Industry Terminology:
http://www.spe.org/speapp/spe/industry/reference/glossary.htm
4. Schlumberger Oilfield Glossary:
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Default.cfm
ii. Non-Academic: Industry Statistic, History, Trivia, Current Event
1. http://www.spe.org/spe-app/spe/industry/statistics/index.htm
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2. Journal of Petroleum Technology

3. http://www.spe.org/spe-app/spe/papers/pubs/index.htm
4. Yergin, Daniel, the Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power.
5. Economides, Michael and Oligney, Ronald, the Color of oil, 2000.
e. Committee given the opportunity for each participating university to submit up to 10
questions. These must be submitted via email to lucky_bagus@cnooc.co.id no later
than 9 October 2015. See 2015 PetroBowl Question Writing Guidelines for more
information. Poorly written questions will not be used in the competition. The
PetroBowl Committee shall be the ultimate authority in determining a questions
validity and correctness, and questions may be re-worded and/or re-phrased at the
Committees discretion and without notice.
G. Toss-up Questions
a. Player may buzz in (using his/her buzzer) to answer a toss-up question at any point
after the moderator has begun reading the question.
b. Once a player has buzzed in, a tournament official will verbally recognize the first
player who buzzed in by name, or by number, or by pointing toward the player.
c. The player who buzzed in and is recognized by the moderator to answer may NOT
confer verbally or otherwise with teammates (or spectators). Should this occur, the
player will lose the chance to respond to the question and the opposing team will be
allowed to answer. There is no penalty for player who has signaled answers before
being recognized, provided there is no confusion as to who was the first player to
signal.
d. If a player buzzes in before the moderator has finished reading, the moderator will
stop at the point. If the answer given is incorrect, the moderator will finish the
question for the other team only. The moderator will not reread the entire question,
but will resume at a natural point in the question.
e. An answer to a toss-up must begin within 5 seconds after the player has been
recognized. An answer started after the moderator has said Time will be treated as
no answer. Ties between the player and the timekeeper are decided in favor of the
player.
f. Players have 5 seconds to buzz in after the moderator has finished reading the tossup. If the player answers incorrectly, the other team will then have 5 more seconds to
buzz in. Some questions may permit more time, which will be noted specially by the
question.

g. Decisions as to whether players have exceeded the allotted time to buzz in or to

answer may be rendered only by the tournament officials of a given match and are
not contestable.
h. Each correct answer to a toss-up question is worth 10 points. An incorrect answer will
be assessed a 5 point penalty.
H. Bonus Questions
a. Teams may confer on bonus questions.
b. On bonus questions, the team captain will give the answer or clearly indicate who will
give the answer. The moderator, however, will take the first answer unambiguously
directed at him/her (a buzzer is not necessary). If conflicting answers are directed at
the moderator, that captain will be asked to choose the teams answer.
c. Team has 25 seconds to answer a bonus question. The 25 seconds starts when the
moderator finishes reading the question. If the moderator is asked to repeat the
question the time will still be counting down. After 25 seconds, the moderator will
prompt the team for an answer. Once prompted, the team captain (or the team
member he designates) must immediately begin answering or forfeit the opportunity
to answer.
d. Team may begin its answer before the moderator is finished reading all of a bonus
question. In such cases, the moderator stops reading when the team begins its
answer. If the bonus contains another part, and the first part was answered correctly,
the moderator then reads the next part of the question.
e. Each bonus question is worth up to 20 points. There will not be a penalty for
incorrect answers to bonus questions.
I. Correct Answers
a. The moderator will accept only the first answer given by a player, except for multiple
answer questions and situations enumerated below.
i. Anything a player says in his/her answer response will be ignored unless it
modifies the first answer (noun) given. For example, if a player says Nixon,
Watergate, the moderator will consider only Nixon. If a player says Nixon,
Fred Nixon, then the moderator will consider Fred Nixon. Similarly,
matter, cold dark, is treated the same as cold dark matter.
ii. Modifying words before the first noun of a response are considered as one
answer with the noun.
iii. Extraneous information preceding a response is disregarded, unless the
moderator determines that the extraneous information was given in an

unsporting attempt to delay the game, in which case the response is treated
as incorrect (in addition to any other penalty for misconduct). Harmless or
inadvertent embellishment of responses will not be penalized, as long as the
embellishment does not make the response wrong.
b. If a question has multiple answers, a player may provide multiple responses in any
order, and without a pause of more than 5 seconds between responses. Since the
multiple responses are still considered one answer, the moderator will rule the
answer as wrong if any part is wrong.
c. Common acronyms and abbreviations are often acceptable (e.g. chemical symbols,
state postal abbreviations, organizational acronyms), unless they appear in the
question, in which case the moderator may prompt the player to expand the
acronym or abbreviations. If the question does not indicate, the moderator will take
the acronym or abbreviation response as correct if a toss-up question, and will
prompt for full name if a bonus question.
d. If a question asks to identify an answer from a list, the player must name the exact
answer (e.g. NOT the second thing you read or the one that started with F).
J. Ethics and Conduct
a. All players, institutional representatives, and other persons associated with a team
are bound by an honor code to behave responsibly and ethically. This includes, but is
not limited to: treating all other participants and staff with courtesy, not receiving or
giving impermissible assistance, not creating the temptation for another to cheat,
abiding by all decisions of the tournament staff, not colluding with another person to
fix a match result, not intentionally throwing a match, not writing down or
recording questions and answer, honestly reporting details of game situations to
tournament officials, and promptly reporting violations of this honor code to a
tournament official. For more on SPEs Code of Conduct, please refer to
http://www.spe.org/about/professional-code-of-conduct.php
b. Any tournament official may find that a player, coach, institutional representative, or
other person associated with a team during the tournament has committed
misconduct. Misconduct includes disruptive behavior, unethical behavior, any
violation of the honor code, or other un-sportsman like conduct. Officials may
interpret these categories broadly.
c. Major infractions and/or repeated infractions may result in ejection for an individual
and/or disqualification for a team at the discretion of tournament officials.

K. Seeding, Bracket, Wait List, and Byes

a. The bracket will be a standard 16-team single-elimination bracket.
b. Teams will be seeded by PetroBowl committee such as that no team from the same
SC (Student Chapter) match on the first round.
c. Sample bracket is shown below:
16-Team Bracket

2015 APOGCE PETROBOWL

Question Writing Guidelines
a. All questions are to relate to the petroleum industry and/or petroleum engineering. They may
consist of history, trivia, current events, technical questions, calculations and problem solving.
Try to create sound engineering questions.
b. All questions are to have only ONE possible correct answer. No true/false or multiple choice
questions, that is, no question should be worded in such a way that the user is given the
choice of answers. (ie. arrange these in order is acceptable, but which one A, B, or C is
not)
c. Answers must come from a reliable source such as those suggested below. Please note source
in a works cited format. Class notes or professor's teachings are not permitted.
d. Questions need to be clear and concise due to the limited time to respond. Include clues that
allow the answer to unfold as the question is being read. For questions involving a place, a
geographic or other reference is a good clue.
e. All calculations questions need to be asked in Oilfield and SI units due to international team
participation.
f. For questions involving numbers, they need allow for a reasonable range of answers.
g. Avoid from potentially controversial questions. (for example, Joe Drilling drilled the deepest
well in the world)
h. Questions involving visuals (plots, schematics, etc.) are allowed and encouraged.
i. Suggested (but not all inclusive) list of study materials as possible sources of questions.

Sample Toss-Up Questions

Please use the following format (in Microsoft Excel, if possible) when submitting your questions,
including clearly stating the question, all possible answers, and source from which you obtained the
information:
Q: This is defined as the volume in barrels that one stock tank barrel occupies in the formation at
reservoir temperature and with the solution gas which can be held in the oil at that pressure.
A: Formation Volume Factor (FVF) or Bo
S: Craft, B.C. and Hawkins, M.F. Applied Petroleum Reservoir Engineering. Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959, pg 102.
Q: You are asked to plan for a new well and need to order the drill pipe. The well will be drilled to a
total depth of 6000ft (or ~1800m). Based on the standard length of a drill string, exactly how many
joints of drill pipe will you need to drill to this depth?
A: 6000ft / 30ft/joint = 200 or 1800m / 9m/joint = 200
S:http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Display.cfm?Term=joint
Q: As a drilling engineer, it is often your job to design the casing string for wells. If you selected P110 casing, what does the value 110 indicate?
A: Minimum yield strength. (In this example, 110,000 psi.)
S: Burgoyne, Adam T. et al, Applied Drilling Engineering, SPE Textbook Series, Vol. 2. Richardson:
Society of Petroleum Engineers, 1992, pg 302, Table 7.1.
Q: The livelihood of a petroleum engineer depends greatly on the price of crude oil. Plus or minus
US $1.00, what was the closing price of a barrel of oil, either west Texas Intermediate or North Sea
Brent, this past Friday?
A: US $##.##
S:http://www.worldoil.com/infocenter/simmonsprices.asp?A=PRICES (Source: Simmons & Company
International)

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Sample Bonus Questions

Q: While hydrocarbons by definition are compounds containing only hydrogen and carbon, motor
fuels consist of saturated hydrocarbons, also known as alkanes. Fore 25 points, what is the lightest
straight chain alkane that exists as a liquid at standard conditions?
A: Pentane
S: McCain, William D. The Properties of Petroleum Fluids, 2nd Edition. Tulsa: PennWell Publishing
Company, 1990, pg 16.
Q: Most of the world's oil and gas reservoirs are located in three types of sedimentary rock. For 10
points each, name these rock types.
A: Sandstone, Limestone (or Carbonate) and Dolomite S: Selley, Richard, Applied
Sedimentology.1997, pg 98.

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