Petroleum Academies ยป Southwest High School
Southwest Academy of Petroleum Engineering & Technology (SAPET)
By: Ashley Mendendez, 12th Grade
In the past few months, SAPET has been diligently working toward one goal, which was to bring home the trophy from Houston on January 26th. Since December, the top teams had been working hard, tweaking and adding finishing touches to their presentations, and the hard work paid off. SAPET took twelve teams down to Houston to compete in the annual IPAA / PESA Speaking Competition and seven teams walked away with a win. "Producing Oil and Gas" won third in the freshmen PowerPoint division. "Changing Our Reliance on Foreign Oil and Natural Gas" and "The Petroleum Value Chain" won second and first respectively for the sophomore PowerPoint division. The juniors had a clean sweep in their Panel Discussion category having all three SAPET junior teams place with "Why Should We Reduce Our Dependence on Foreign Oil?", "What Do Petroleum Engineers Do?" and "What Affects the Cost of Gasoline." The unique and mature topic "The Keystone XL Pipeline" received first place. This was a moment of triumph for all as the seniors aspired to winning the trophy as a one of their final moments in SAPET. These seniors will be the first graduating class for SAPET, and winning the trophy was a way to leave a legacy for all the future SAPET students to see.
While the seniors prepare to say goodbye, the juniors are preparing for an exciting opportunity. The juniors received applications for summer externships and completed the IPAA / PESA Professional Development training with Ms. Jessica Thomas. The juniors are excited to work with leading Oil & Gas industry companies just like their senior predecessors and hope to make a lasting impression with the companies with their new found professional knowledge.
The SAPET students have recently had speakers from LimeRock, XTO and the Army Corps of Engineers discuss industry topics. They have been intrigued and engaged in hopes to gain knowledge that they can apply in the future.
Three seniors were awarded scholarships at the annual IPAA / PESA Scholarship Breakfast. David Ontiveros and Cody Davis were awarded $5k while Alexis Barron was awarded $10k. Ms. Jessica Prado was also announced as IPAA / PESA Teacher of the Year. She was very surprised. Congratulations!
