Thank you for coming

This purpose of this session is to create questions for the ever-

growing global PetroBowl® program. Questions will be sent to the
PetroBowl Workgroup so that they can be used during our global
competitions.
About PetroBowl®

• SPE student chapters answer quick fire industry-related questions to win points.

• Since its debut in 2002, it has now grown to become a global event with the introduction
of six regional qualifier contests.

• Regional qualifiers now take place in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Middle
East and South America and Caribbean.

• The top 36 teams are invited to the PetroBowl championship at the SPE
Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE).
PetroBowl questions
Because of the quick nature of PetroBowl we go through around 300
questions for each regional qualifier and nearly 1000 at ATCE.

• Once questions have been answered correctly they cannot be reused.

• We need a constant stream of questions which are reviewed by the PetroBowl workgroup.

• The workgroup want questions from all over the world and cover all topics relating to the
upstream oil and gas industry to have a diverse and fair question database.

• Questions cover all technical and non-technical disciplines, industry history and SPE
related questions.

• The aim is to test students diverse and detailed knowledge about oil and gas
so the best teams make it through to the final.
PetroBowl rules and regulations
Rules and regulations for the contest are available online at
www.spe.org/students/petrobowl

• You don’t need to read the full list of rules and regulations to write questions.

• Useful information can be found from page 9 to 13 regarding the game format and
question use.

• Reading this will help provide context and how questions are used.

• All questions will be reviewed before being used in the competition so don’t worry if
you are unsure about your question.

• You can also use our questions writing guidelines to find out more.
Question structure
We have two types of questions in the contest, all questions and
answers should be brief to keep the pace of the competition. No
essay or descriptive questions should be submitted for PetroBowl.
Toss up questions:

• Short, one word or brief answer questions.

• Open for both teams to buzz in and answer but no conferring is allowed.
• Questions must be answered in 5 seconds and are worth 10 points.
• Incorrect answers get a 5 point penalty.

Bonus questions:

• When teams gets a correct answer they are offered a “bonus question”.
• Questions can be more descriptive than toss up questions.
• Could have visual or equation elements.
• They can also have have multiple parts to the answer.
• Team members can confer and have 15 seconds to answer.
Question writing guidelines
Printed out for you is a set of “question writing guidelines” which
you should abide by when writing your questions. Please read the
guidelines carefully. Here are some of the main points:

No multiple choice questions

No questions to be based on acronyms (without giving the appropriate context of that
acronym)
No true or false questions
No questions should give only two options as answers
Questions that have several possible answers should only be bonus questions
Statistical questions should not be more than 2 years old
References
All questions and answers need to be checked, please use
references that can be verified easily by the workgroup such as
book references, journal pages, web links etc.
• If you have not used a source to create your question you should be able to find
corroborating evidence via the resources we have available.
• Questions you submit will be answered by teams from all over the world, try not to use
regionally specific sources some students may not have access to.
• All SPE publications and journals can be accessed via OnePetro and is an excellent way
to source materials.

Here are some resources we have available;

 OnePetro - https://www.onepetro.org/
 SPE Books / Journals
 Schlumberger Glossary - http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/
 PetroWiki - http://petrowiki.org/PetroWiki
 Engineering and Technology History Wiki - http://ethw.org/Main_Page
Question writing tips
Difficulty:
We want to test students knowledge across all disciplines. Students who participate are
largely undergraduate but can be masters or PhD level as well. Questions should test the
knowledge of students at all levels but should not rely on industry experience.

Time to answer questions:

Students only have 5 or 15 seconds to answer questions so think if students can answer
within this time when writing your question.

Obvious questions:
Don’t worry if your question has been submitted before, questions get used and reviewed
so this will be checked before being used in a contest.

Read you question out loud:

Your questions will be used vocally, so you may want to try reading your question
out loud. This will show you if your question is too long or isn’t as clear as it reads
on paper.
How to submit
During this session we will write questions using a spreadsheet.
Each row represents a separate questions and the required details can
be filled in the columns.

These columns are required to help categorise and check the questions so a good range of
disciplines and difficulties are covered in your question set.

In the spreadsheet you will find disciplines further explained as well as some
examples of the questions being used. For image based questions you should
keep the image file separately as well as a smaller version on the spreadsheet,
this enables a high quality version to be used during the actual contest while
ensuring the right image is used.
Thank you!
We hope you have fun contributing to the PetroBowl program. You
are contributing to a contest which engages students from all over
the world and we are all very grateful!
The winner of our
2015
#RoadtoPetroBowl
Video Contest,
Federal University
of Campina
Grande in Brazil
showing their
dedication to the
contest!