A team of five students from the Department of Energy, Mineral and Petroleum Studies at the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology (FAST) participated in the SPE Uganda Section PetroBowl® Competition 2023 for all the SPE Student Chapters in Uganda. These included: Mr. John Baptist Eshana Kauta, Mr. Victor Mugambe, Mr. Oscar Azookire, Ms. Juliet Alleluia, and Jovin Okello). These were mentored and coached by Eng. Partick Kabanda Head of the Department of Petroleum Engineering and Environmental Management.
The student chapters are of universities and/or tertiary institutions currently these include Makerere University, Kyambogo University, Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST), International University of East Africa (IUEA), Nkumba University, and Uganda Institute of Petroleum Kigumba (UPIK) that offer Petroleum Engineering related programs.
All these participated in the PetroBowl® competition, which was organized in two stages: an internal selection stage and a finalist stage. The internal selection stage was conducted virtually, on 4th March 2023. The finalist stage was conducted on 11th March 2023 at the Stanbic Business Incubator Limited, Kololo, Kampala where the SPE MUST PetroBowl® team competed with the student chapter teams from other universities and emerged the winners.
Having secured the first-place position at the National level, the SPE MUST PetroBowl® team was scheduled to take part in the SPE Africa Regional PetroBowl® Qualifiers and indeed this took place on 8th to 10th May 2023, at the University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana where the SPE MUST PetroBowl® team emerged as the first runners-up, thereby securing her place in the SPE International PetroBowl® Championships. The PetroBowl Championships are scheduled to take place in October 2023 at the Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) in San Antonio, Texas, USA.
On behalf of the team Eng. Patrick Kabanda, said their success is attributed to so many arms that included the Faculty of Applied Sciences through the dean Dr. Johnes Obungoloch, the University administration, the students’ associations at FAST, the SPE Uganda Section and her partners, who fully supported the students from the start.
“I thank you all for your selflessness towards our success like engineers say, “It takes both sides to build a bridge.” We built the bridge, but like Oliver twist we want more…. now that the team is heading to the US meet the top teams from all over the world”.
MUST is proud of you thank you for FAST you were unstoppable while raising the MUST flag best of luck in the next competition.