Product catalogue
Soil gas surveys for hydrogen and helium in New South Wales
<div>Exploring for the Future (2016-2024) was an Australian Government program led by Geoscience Australia (GA), in partnership with state and Northern Territory governments. The program aim was to drive industry investment in resource exploration in frontier regions of Australia by providing new precompetitive data and information about energy, mineral and groundwater resource potential.
To address this overarching objective, GA led a key element of the Australian Government’s commitment to achieve net zero by 2050. The energy transition to an ever decreasing carbon emission economy will involve the increasing use of hydrogen gas (hydrogen). The key benefit of using hydrogen is that it is a clean fuel, emitting only water vapour and heat when combusted. However, hydrogen today is manufactured at a relatively high cost. The recent discovery of a 98% per cent pure natural hydrogen field in Mali (Africa) has led to low cost hydrogen production. It has also captured the imagination of explorers and the search is now on for new natural hydrogen accumulations across the world. Australia is considered one of the most prospective locations for sub-surface natural hydrogen due to our ancient geology and potential presence of suitable hydrogen traps. A review of occurrences of hydrogen in natural sub-surface rocks found high concentrations of hydrogen in central western, New South Wales (NSW). Helium is extracted in commercial quantities from natural gas and Australia currently has no local production. This project, in collaboration with the Geological Survey of NSW (GSNSW), built on the desktop review and has identified new occurrences of natural hydrogen and helium through soil gas surveys in various locations across central and far west, NSW.
To support the Exploring for the Future program, six soil gas surveys for natural hydrogen and helium were jointly undertaken by staff from GA and GSNSW across central and western NSW during 2022-23. The project also included sites near the Tumut township to test various soil gas sampling techniques as well as the major focus in the Curnamona Province and Delamerian Orogen in far west New South Wales. In the first phase of the project, conceptual geological models for natural hydrogen and helium generation and accumulation were developed using pre-existing geoscientific data, including electromagnetic, magnetotelluric, magnetic, gravity, radiometric, drilling, seismic and satellite-derived data. The selected sites represented various concepts for natural hydrogen and helium generation, such as granite rocks rich in potassium, thorium, and uranium, banded iron formations, ultramafic rocks, and diatremes. The second phase of the project was the collection of soil gases from shallow (1 m deep) installations and subsequent molecular and isotopic compositional analysis at the GA Laboratory. Maximum hydrogen and helium concentrations in the soil gases are 309.5 ppm and 35.3 ppm, respectively, which is comparable to and even exceeds previously reported soil gas surveys both in Western Australia and overseas. The final phase was the integration of all datasets within a GIS platform for the interpretation and presentation of maps within this report.</div>
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2024-06-19T16:00:00
- Date (Publication)
- 2024-12-22T22:43:25
- Citation identifier
- Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/149687
- Citation identifier
- Digital Object Identifier/https://dx.doi.org/10.26186/149687
- Cited responsible party
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Publisher Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Author Boreham, C.
Internal Contact Author Czado, K.
External Contact Author Taylor, G.
External Contact Author Black, E.
Internal Contact
- Name
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Record
- Issue identification
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GA Record 2024/056
- Purpose
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Geoscience Australia has led a key element of the Australian Government’s commitment to achieve net zero by 2050. This element is the adoption of hydrogen (H2) energy. The key benefit of using H2 is that it is a clean fuel, emitting only water vapour and heat when combusted. The recent discovery of a 98% per cent pure natural H2 gas field in Mali has captured the imagination of explorers and the search is now on for new natural H2 gas accumulations across the world. Australia is considered one of the most prospective locations for sub-surface natural H2 due to our ancient geology and potential presence of suitable H2 traps. A review of occurrences of natural H2 found high concentrations of H2 gas present in central western, New South Wales (NSW). This project, in collaboration with the Geological Survey of NSW, builds on that early work and identifies new occurrences of natural H2 through soil gas surveys in various locations across central and far west, NSW. Helium is also a strategic resource, being used by industrial, manufacturing, medical, recreational, research and space sectors. Currently helium is extracted in commercial quantities from natural gas. This document summarises the reconnaissance soil gas results obtained on molecular hydrogen (H2) and atomic helium (He) collected under the Exploring for the Future program. The purpose of the soil gas field studies was to collect samples and to document occurrences of geologic (natural) H2 and He in the Curnamona Province and Delamerian Orogen in far west New South Wales (NSW). The project also included sites near the Tumut township to test various soil gas sampling techniques. This project was a collaboration between Geoscience Australia (GA) and the Geological Survey of New South Wales (GSNSW), Department of Regional NSW. Its goal was to attract explorers to ultimately discover helium and natural hydrogen fields in this region
- Status
- Completed
- Point of contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Resource provider Minerals, Energy and Groundwater Division
External Contact Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Point of contact Boreham, C.
Internal Contact
- Spatial representation type
- Topic category
-
- Geoscientific information
Extent
))
- Maintenance and update frequency
- As needed
Resource format
- Title
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Product data repository: Various Formats
- Website
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Data Store directory containing the digital product files
Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes
- Project
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EFTF – Exploring for the Future
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- Project
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SIRF - Strategic Innovative Reserve Fund
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- Keywords
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Natural hydrogen
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- Keywords
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Gas seepage
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- Keywords
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Soil gas
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- Keywords
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Helium
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- theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
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EARTH SCIENCES
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- Keywords
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Published_External
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Resource constraints
- Title
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
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CC-BY
- Edition
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4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- License
- Other constraints
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(c) Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2024
Resource constraints
- Title
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Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
- Classification system
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Australian Government Security Classification System
Associated resource
- Association Type
- Larger work citation
- Title
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A landform sub-circular depression study in western NSW
- Citation identifier
- 148546
- Citation identifier
- 490d4810-126f-4044-ac84-6346d8c2608c
Associated resource
- Association Type
- Was derived from
- Title
-
Soil Gas Database Table
- Citation identifier
- 149321
- Citation identifier
- 0596b877-468e-40e3-b9b9-bcfc0857fdc6
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Distribution Information
- Distributor contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Distributor Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice facsimile
- OnLine resource
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Download Report (pdf) [12.7 MB]
Download Report (pdf) [12.7 MB]
- Distribution format
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pdf
- File decompression technique
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nil
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- OnLine resource
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Download Appendix D (zip) [74.8 MB]
Download Appendix D (zip) [74.8 MB]
- Distribution format
-
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pptx
- File decompression technique
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unzip
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- OnLine resource
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Download Appendix E (zip) [199.0 MB}
Download Appendix E (zip) [199.0 MB}
- Distribution format
-
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pptx
- File decompression technique
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unzip
-
- OnLine resource
-
Download Appendix F (zip) [11.3 MB]
Download Appendix F (zip) [11.3 MB]
- Distribution format
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pdf xlsx kmz kml shp
- File decompression technique
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unzip
-
- OnLine resource
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Download Appendix G (zip) [2.6 GB)
Download Appendix G (zip) [2.6 GB)
- Distribution format
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tiff xml
- File decompression technique
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unzip
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Resource lineage
- Statement
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<div>This report was prepared for Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future program in a collaboration between Geoscience Australia and the Geological Survey of NSW.</div>
Metadata constraints
- Title
-
Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
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urn:uuid/fe6588fe-85eb-4b2e-a3ac-627abddb7774
- Title
-
GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
- Contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Point of contact Boreham, C.
Internal Contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Document
- Name
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GA Record
Alternative metadata reference
- Title
-
Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with
uuid
- Citation identifier
- eCatId/149687
- Date info (Creation)
- 2024-08-07T04:58:52
- Date info (Revision)
- 2024-08-07T04:58:52
Metadata standard
- Title
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AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-3
- Title
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Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014
- Edition
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Version 2.0, September 2018
- Citation identifier
- http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551