• Product catalogue
  •  
  •  
  •  

Cooper Basin Unconventional Gas Prospectivity Review

The Cooper Basin is a late Carboniferous - Middle Triassic intracratonic basin in north-eastern South Australia and south-western Queensland. The basin is Australia's premier onshore hydrocarbon producing province and, by providing domestic gas for the East Coast Gas Market, is nationally significant. Exploration activity in the region has recently expanded with numerous explorers pursuing newly identified unconventional hydrocarbon plays. While conventional gas and oil prospects are more clearly identified by 3D seismic, the undiscovered unconventional gas resources in the basin remain poorly defined.

This study reviews the hydrocarbon prospectivity of the Cooper Basin, with a focus on unconventional gas resources. Regional basin architecture is characterised through compilation and integration of seismic and well data, indicating the wider extent of the Permian Toolachee and Patchawarra formations further north in Queensland. Source rock distribution and quality are reviewed demonstrating the abundance of viable source rock intervals across the whole basin. The Toolachee and Patchawarra formations are the richest sources; however organic-rich rocks are also present in the Nappamerri, Daralingie and Epsilon formations, and the Roseneath and Murteree shales. Petroleum systems modelling, incorporating new compositional kinetics, source quality and Total Organic Carbon (TOC) maps, highlights the variability in burial, thermal and hydrocarbon generation histories between depocentres. Although hydrocarbon generation began in the Permian, peak oil and gas expulsion across the basin occurred during the Cretaceous.

The Cooper Basin hosts a range of unconventional gas play types, including the very extensive basin-centred and tight gas accumulations in the Gidgealpa Group, deep dry coal gas associated with the Patchawarra and Toolachee formations, as well as the less extensive shale gas plays in the Murteree and Roseneath shales. However, the overlapping nature of these plays makes it more convenient to consider them collectively as a composite Gidgealpa Group unconventional gas play. The possible extent of the composite Gidgealpa Group gas play fairway is defined using a common risk segment mapping workflow. Low and high confidence play fairway extents are also calculated.

In South Australia and the south-western most areas of Queensland, the composite Gidgealpa Group gas play fairway maps show that the Nappamerri and Allunga troughs are highly prospective, along with the deepest areas of the Patchawarra and Arrabury troughs. The play fairway maps also show the prospectivity potential for unconventional gas further to the northeast in Queensland, including areas of the Windorah Tough and Ullenbury Depression.

The prospectivity of the Cooper Basin for composite unconventional gas plays exceeds its currently known conventional resources. Whilst additional work is required to better characterise key petroleum systems elements, the play fairway area estimated for the combined Gidgealpa Group gas play is significantly larger than that of the Roseneath and Murteree shale gas plays alone, suggesting very large volumes of gas in-place and highlighting the Cooper Basin's status as a world class unconventional gas province.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Publication)
2014-01-01T00:00:00
Citation identifier
Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/82505

Cited responsible party
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Publisher

Geoscience Australia

Canberra
Author

Hall, L.S.

1
Author

Hill, A.J.

2
Author

Wang, L.

3
Author

Edwards, D.

4
Author

Kuske, T.

5
Author

Troup, A

6
Author

Boreham, C.

7
Point of contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Custodian

ED

Owner

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Custodian

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Voice
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information
Maintenance and update frequency
Unknown

Resource format

Title

Product data repository: Various Formats

Protocol

FILE:DATA-DIRECTORY

Name of the resource

Data Store directory containing the digital product files

Description

Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes

Keywords
  • GA Publication

  • Other Publication

Keywords
  • SA

  • QLD

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)
  • Earth Sciences

Keywords
  • Published_External

Resource constraints

Title

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence

Alternate title

CC-BY-NC

Edition

4.0

Website

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
License

Resource constraints

Title

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified
Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Distribution Information

Distributor contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Distributor

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Voice
OnLine resource

File download

Presentation (pdf)

Distribution format
  • pdf

Resource lineage

Statement

Unknown

Hierarchy level
Non geographic dataset
Other

GA Publication

Description

Source data not available.

Metadata constraints

Title

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/078c78bf-4a59-422d-e054-00144fdd4fa6

Title

GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8
Contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

Voice

Type of resource

Resource scope
Document
Name

nonGeographicDataset

Alternative metadata reference

Title

Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with

uuid

Citation identifier
eCatId/82505

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/078c78bf-4a59-422d-e054-00144fdd4fa6

Date info (Revision)
2018-04-20T06:06:14
Date info (Creation)
2014-11-11T00:00:00

Metadata standard

Title

AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-3

Title

Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition

Version 2.0, September 2018

Citation identifier
https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551

 
 

Provided by

Access to the portal
Read here the full details and access to the data.

Associated resources

Not available


  •  
  •  
  •