Petrobowl Championship is an annual competition held by the SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) annually as one of the eyes of the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE). This competition compares 32 teams from various countries around the world by testing the knowledge of each team related to the oil world with a system of meticulous intelligence, both technical and non-technical knowledge. To participate in the Petrobowl Championship, each team is required to participate in the Petrobowl Regional Qualifier, which is the regional preliminary round (Indonesia including the Asia Pacific region). The top five teams at the regional level can join the world-class Petrobowl.

Petrobowl Asia Pacific Regional Qualifier (hereinafter referred to as APRQ) this year took place on July 26, 2017 at Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP), Malaysia. The race was followed by 21 teams from 7 countries. The team from ITB itself consists of four people, namely Adnan Syahrul Ramadhan (TM 2013), Gitani Tsalitsah Dahnil (TM 2013), Kevin Tja (TM 2013), and Wingky Suganda (TM 2014).

On Tuesday, July 25, 2017 The ITB team departs for Malaysia from Husein Sastranegara Airport Bandung, and arrives at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 13:30 Malaysian time. Later, we met with the APRQ committee and set out with several other teams to the race site at UTP, which is about 4 hours drive from the airport. We arrived at UTP around 7 pm. The event continued with dinner together and technical meeting. Then we rested at D Hotel, which is located about 10 minutes from UTP.

The next morning, at about 9 o’clock we went to UTP to start the race. The competition itself consists of 5 innings. Starting from preliminary round, then 16 big, big 8, semifinal, and final. Because in the previous year ITB won first place, this year ITB was given the opportunity to directly enter the round of 16 large. In this round, our team against the team from the Islamic University of Riau and managed to win. In the round of 8, ITB met with UPN “Veteran” Yogyakarta, and again excelled. This victory brought ITB to the semifinals.

In the semifinals we met with Batangas State University Philippines with a very tight competition with scores that followed each other. In the end, Batangas State University leads 5 points from ITB. This made ITB fail to enter the final, but returned to the race against Trisakti University to compete for rank 3. However, in this round, Trisakti University is the winner, so the final result of ITB is ranked 4th.

However, in line with APRQ’s main objective, which is to select the 5 best teams to send to the International Championships, ITB together with four other universities passes to the next level. Universities that will represent Asia Pacific include Batangas State University, University of Indonesia, Trisakti University, ITB, and China University of Petroleum. This International Petrobowl Championship will take place from 8-11 October 2017 in San Antonio, Texas, USA.

On the evening of July 26, 2017 Gala Dinner and placards were held for the champions. The next day at 1 pm ITB team returned to Kuala Lumpur by train, and returned to Indonesia on the morning of July 28, 2017.