A team from Sultan Qaboos University secured first place in the Imperial Barrel Award (IBA) competition, retaining their title for the third consecutive year at the Middle East level. The team also received the Innovation Award, outperforming eight universities from Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, and Iraq.

Following this achievement, the SQU team will represent the Middle East region in the final round, to be held in Houston this August. Notably, the team achieved first place globally last year in the field of oil and gas.

The Imperial Barrel Award is an international competition organised annually by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. It challenges students to study and analyse geophysical and geological data from various regions worldwide in order to identify potential oil and gas reservoirs within a given study area.

The team comprises Abdullah Al-Mahrooqi, Abdulrahman Al-Awaid, Sarah Al-Saadi, and Muzna Al-Qasmi from the Department of Earth Sciences, along with Jasim Al-Aradi from the Department of Petroleum Engineering. The team was supervised and trained by Dr. Mohammed Farfour, Associate Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, with support from Dr. Musaab Al-Sarmi, Assistant Professor in the same department, as well as Khadija Al-Maimani, who served as assistant coach from Petroleum Development Oman.