PetroChallenge Norway is an annual learning event getting students involved in the challenges of hydrocarbon exploration.

Students are working in teams of three and four. Each team is an oil and gas company searching for petroleum in the subsurface using the learning simulation OilSim. The winner is the team that is able to create the highest value compared to the investment required.

To succeed in the quest, the students need to work effectively both in their own teams as well as in collaboration with other teams. Other teams might be from other schools, and teams provide each other with advice and sharing of risk.

During the event, teams study environmental, geological and geophyscial surveys, bid for licenses, drill exploration wells and hopefully end up finding commercially viable oil and gas fields.

Many Norwegian schools have made PetroChallenge an annual learning event, as the teachers and students have found it to be an engaging and effective teaching tool.

PetroChallenge supports individual subjects in the curriculum and can be applied as an interdisciplinary approach. It challenges the students in a variety of subjects including physics, chemistry, maths, social and environmental studies, politics, business, economics, collaboration within and outwith the group, as well as reading and writing English.

Schools can register as many participants as they like, and the event is applicable to both first, second and third year students. In many schools all the first year students or all the second year students participate, and in other schools it is just one class that joins in.

All participation in PetroChallenge Norway 2012 is free of charge and the ressources required are only the student and teacher hours involved, as well as internet access and one OilSim compatible computer per team.