[Photo Caption: Official opening of the Forum by the Saint Petersburg Mining University President Vladimir S. Litvinenko and the distinguished guests. Source: Outpost North-West.]
Since its establishment, the SPE Baghdad Section has been keen to focus on empowering young professionals (YPs) by organizing local and international technical events that allow them to be aware of new technologies in the upstream oil and gas industry.
As part of the many opportunities the section provides the students and YPs of the section, eight YPs were provided with a free-total pass for participating in the “XVI International Forum-Contest of Students and Young Researchers: Topical Issues for the Rational Use of Natural Resources.” Held 17-19 June, the event was organized by the St. Petersburg Mining University and the International Competence Centre for Mining Engineering Education, under the auspices of UNESCO in Russia. As with most of the events these days, the meetings and presentations were held via web with outstanding participation by students, postgraduates, and young scientists from Russian and foreign universities, and employees of mining, geological, oil and gas, energy, engineering, and metallurgical companies, among others.
Migrating the event to a web platform due to COVID-19 demonstrated to improve the success of the forum in both the number of contestants (up to a record of more than 800 people) and the number of attendees (up to 2000 people). This represents an increase of 150% over last year’s attendance.
Over the years, the forum has become a platform for academic panel discussions where young researchers introduce themselves to scientific communities. World-leading mining experts, scientists, and top managers of oil and gas companies attend the event to analyze the solutions presented by young specialists. This year's forum was a success with contestants representing 49 countries and more than 350 universities and scientific organizations.
The head of the St. Petersburg Mining University, Vladimir Litvinenko; Russia’s Minister of Science and Higher Education, Valery Falkov; UNESCO head of research, Peggy Oti-Boateng, and top managers of major Russian specialized companies attended the opening ceremony of the competition. All them highlighted in repeated occasions that the competition “helps to improve the quality of the system of training scientific personnel, assists in the progress of mining and processing industries, and facilitates the integration of scientific systems of various countries.” The SPE Baghdad Section was represented in the form as both participants and members of the expert jury that reviewed the research.
The forum experts claimed that year’s presentations were of notably quality, with most of them focusing on production systems.