<p>The Exploring for the Future program is an initiative by the Australian Government dedicated to boosting investment in resource exploration in Australia. The four-year program led by Geoscience Australia focusses on northern Australia and parts of South Australia to gather new data and information about the potential mineral, energy and groundwater resources concealed beneath the surface. As part of the Exploring for the Future program, this study aims to improve our understanding of the petroleum resource potential of northern Australia. As a component of this project, collaboration between the Onshore Energy Systems Branch, Geoscience Australia and the Northern Territory Geological Survey (NTGS) is designed to produce pre-competitive information to assist with the evaluation of the petroleum prospectivity of onshore Northern Territory basins. <p>Proterozoic basins of northern Australia including the McArthur Basin, the Isa Superbasin and the Isa Superbasin have the potential to host conventional oil and gas, in addition to unconventional shale gas and oil plays (Muir et al., 1980; Munson, 2014; Revie, 2016; Revie, 2017; Gorton & Troup, 2018). To date, work on the prospective petroleum systems in the McArthur Basin has focused principally on source rocks within the McArthur and Roper groups in the southern parts of the basin. However due to limited data availability, the spatial variability in source rock quality, type and thermal maturity remains poorly constrained across the region. In the South Nicholson region of Queensland and the Northern Territory, data from the Paleoproterozoic Isa Superbasin and the Mesoproterozoic South Nicholson Basin is extremely limited and a large proportion of the available data is old and of poor quality. To more comprehensively characterise these organic rich source rocks, higher resolution coverages of pre-competitive geochemical data is required (Gorton & Troup, 2018; Jarrett et al. 2018). <p>This data release contains the total organic carbon (TOC) content and Rock-Eval pyrolysis data of 314 samples selected from nine drill cores from the McArthur Basin, South Nicholson Basin and Isa Superbasin that are housed in the Northern Territory Geological Survey’s Darwin core repository. The wells include Glyde 1, Lamont Pass 3 (McArthur Basin), Brunette Downs 1, CRDD001, NTGS 00/1, NTGS 01/1, NTGS 02/1 (South Nicholson Basin), in addition to ND1 and ND2 (Isa Superbasin). This data was generated at the Isotope and Organic Geochemistry Laboratory at Geoscience Australia as part of the Exploring for the Future program. The results show that the McArthur Basin samples analysed contain source rocks with poor to fair oil and gas generative potential with variable thermal maturity from immature to early oil mature. The Isa Superbasin samples analysed have poor to good gas generative potential and the South Nicholson samples analysed have poor to excellent gas generative potential. Samples from the Walford Dolostone and the Mullera Formation are overmature and petroleum potential cannot be assessed from the results of this study. This data release provides additional information that can be used to characterise the organic richness, kerogen type and thermal maturity of source rocks in the Teena Dolostone, Barney Creek Formation and Lynott Formation of the McArthur Basin, the Walford Dolostone and Mount Les Siltstone of the Isa Superbasin, in addition to the Constance Sandstone and Mullera Formation of the South Nicholson Basin. This data is provided in preparation for future work to generate statistics quantifying the spatial distribution, quantity and quality of source rocks, providing important insights into the hydrocarbon prospectivity of northern Australian basins

As part of the Exploring for the Future Programme this study aims to improve our understanding of the petroleum resource potential of Northern Australia. As a component or this project, collaboration between the Onshore Energy Branch, Geoscience Australia and the Northern Territory Geological Survey (NTGS) is designed to produce pre-competitive information to assist with the evaluation of the petroleum prospectivity of onshore Northern Territory basins. This report characterises the organic richness, kerogen type and thermal maturity of source rocks in the Velkerri, Barney Creek, Wollogorang and McDermott formations of the McArthur Basin based on Rock-Eval pyrolysis data analysed at Geoscience Australia in the 2017 to 2018 financial year. This data is provided in preparation for future work to generate statistics quantifying the spatial distribution, quantity and quality of McArthur Basin source rocks, providing important insights into the hydrocarbon prospectivity of the basin.

The onshore Canning Basin in Western Australia is the focus of a regional hydrocarbon prospectivity assessment being undertaken by the Exploring for the Future (EFTF) program; an Australian Government initiative dedicated to increasing investment in resource exploration in northern Australia. The four-year program led by Geoscience Australia focusses on the acquisition of new data and information about the potential mineral, energy and groundwater resources concealed beneath the surface in northern Australia and parts of South Australia. As part of this program, significant work has been carried out to deliver new pre-competitive data including new seismic acquisition, drilling of a stratigraphic well and the geochemical analysis of geological samples recovered from exploration wells. A regional, 872 km long 2D seismic line (18GA-KB1) acquired in 2018 by Geoscience Australia (GA) and the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA), images the Kidson Sub-basin of the Canning Basin. In order to provide a test of geological interpretations made from the Kidson seismic survey, a deep stratigraphic well, Waukarlycarly 1, was drilled in 2019 in partnership between Geoscience Australia (GA) and the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) in the South West Canning Basin. The Waukarlycarly 1 stratigraphic well was drilled in the Waukarlycarly Embayment, 67 km west of Telfer and provides stratigraphic control for the geology imaged by the Kidson seismic line (Figure 1). The well was drilled to a total drillers depth (TD) of 2680.53 mRT and penetrated a thin Cenozoic cover overlying a Permo-Carboniferous fluvial clastic succession that includes glacial diamictite. These siliciclastics unconformably overlie an extremely thick (>1730 m) interpreted Devonian to Ordovician succession before terminating in low-grade metasediments of presumed Neoproterozoic age. Log characterisation, core analysis, geochronology, petrographic and palaeontological studies have been carried out to characterise the lithology, age and depositional environment of these sediments. As part of this comprehensive analytical program, TOC and Rock-Eval pyrolysis analyses were undertaken by Geoscience Australia on selected rock samples to establish their hydrocarbon-generating potential and thermal maturity.

The onshore Canning Basin in Western Australia is the focus of a regional hydrocarbon prospectivity assessment being undertaken by the Exploring for the Future (EFTF) program; an Australian Government initiative dedicated to increasing investment in resource exploration in northern Australia. The four-year program led by Geoscience Australia focusses on the acquisition of new data and information about the potential mineral, energy and groundwater resources concealed beneath the surface in northern Australia and parts of South Australia. As part of this program, significant work has been carried out to deliver new pre-competitive data including new seismic acquisition, drilling of a stratigraphic well and the geochemical analysis of geological samples recovered from exploration wells. As part of this comprehensive analytical program, TOC and Rock-Eval pyrolysis analyses were undertaken by Geoscience Australia on selected rock samples from eight wells of the Canning Basin to establish their hydrocarbon-generating potential and thermal maturity. These samples were selected to infill gaps in the existing open file data with a particular focus on the Lower Ordovician Nambeet Formation for comparison with samples from the Waukarlycarly 1 well.

<b>Please Note:</b> The data related to this Abstract can be obtained by contacting <a href = "mailto: clientservices@ga.gov.au">Manager Client Services</a> and quoting Catalogue number 144231. The data are arranged by regions, so please download the Data Description document found in the Downloads tab to determine your area of interest. Remotely sensed datasets provide fundamental information for understanding the chemical, physical and temporal dynamics of the atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere. Satellite remote sensing has been used extensively in mapping the nature and characteristics of the terrestrial land surface, including vegetation, rock, soil and landforms, across global to local-district scales. With the exception of hyper-arid regions, mapping rock and soil from space has been problematic because of vegetation that either masks the underlying substrate or confuses the spectral signatures of geological materials (i.e. diagnostic mineral spectral features), making them difficult to resolve. As part of the Exploring for the Future program, a new barest earth Landsat mosaic of the Australian continent using time-series analysis significantly reduces the influence of vegetation and enhances mapping of soil and exposed rock from space. Here, we provide a brief background on geological remote sensing and describe a suite of enhanced images using the barest earth Landsat mosaic for mapping surface mineralogy and geochemistry. These geological enhanced images provide improved inputs for predictive modelling of soil and rock properties over the Australian continent. In one case study, use of these products instead of existing Landsat TM band data to model chromium and sodium distribution using a random forest machine learning algorithm improved model performance by 28–46%.

<p>In the South Nicholson region of Queensland and the Northern Territory, the Paleoproterozoic Isa Superbasin and the Mesoproterozoic South Nicholson Basin have the potential to host both conventional and unconventional petroleum systems (Gorton & Troup, 2018). The region remains poorly explored however with only 19 petroleum wells drilled in total (Carr et al., 2016). Although nine stratigraphic intervals are described as potential source rocks, data coverage is extremely limited and a large proportion of the available data is old and of poor quality. To more comprehensively characterise these organic rich source rocks, higher resolution coverages of pre-competitive geochemical data is required (Jarrett et al. 2018). <p>This report contains the total organic carbon (TOC) content and Rock-Eval pyrolysis data of 674 samples selected from twelve drill cores housed in the Geological Survey of Queensland’s Brisbane core repository including Amoco DDH 83-1, Amoco DDH 83-2, Amoco DDH 83-3, Amoco DDH 83-4, Argyle Creek 1, Armraynald 1, Burketown 1, Desert Creek 1, Egilabria 1, Egilabria 2 DW1, Egilabria 4, Morstone 1, MORSTONE DDH1. This data was generated at the Isotope and Organic Geochemistry Laboratory at Geoscience Australia as part of the Exploring for the Future program.

The Sentinel-2 Bare Earth thematic product provides the first national scale mosaic of the Australian continent to support improved mapping of soil and geology. The bare earth algorithm using all available Sentinel-2 A and Sentinel-2 B observations up to September 2020 preferentially weights bare pixels through time to significantly reduce the effect of seasonal vegetation in the imagery. The result are image pixels that are more likely to reflect the mineralogy and/or geochemistry of soil and bedrock. The algorithm uses a high-dimensional weighted geometric median approach that maintains the spectral relationships across all Sentinel-2 bands. A similar bare earth algorithm has been applied to Geoscience Australia’s deeper Landsat time series archive (please search for "Landsat barest Earth". Both bare earth products have spectral bands in the visible near infrared and shortwave infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, the main visible and near-infrared Sentinel-2 bands have a spatial resolution of 10 meters compared to 30m for the Landsat TM equivalents. The weighted median approach is robust to outliers (such as cloud, shadows, saturation, corrupted pixels) and also maintains the relationship between all the spectral wavelengths in the spectra observed through time. Not all the sentinel-2 bands have been processed - we have excluded atmospheric bands including 1, 9 and 10. The remaining bands have been re-number 1-10 and these bands correlate to the original bands in brackets below: 1 = blue (2) , 2 = green (3) , 3 = red (4), 4 = vegetation red edge (5), 5 = vegetation red edge (6), 6= vegetation red edge (7), 7 = NIR(8), 8 = Narrow NIR (8a), 9 = SWIR1 (11) and 10 = SWIR2(12). All 10 bands have been resampled to 10 meters to facilitate band integration and use in machine learning.

<div>NDI Carrara 1 is a deep stratigraphic drill hole completed in 2020 as part of the MinEx CRC National Drilling Initiative (NDI) in collaboration with Geoscience Australia and the Northern Territory Geological Survey. It is the first test of the Carrara Sub-Basin, a depocentre newly discovered in the South Nicholson region based on interpretation from seismic surveys (L210 in 2017 and L212 in 2019) recently acquired as part of the Exploring for the Future program. The drill hole intersected approximately 1100 m of Proterozoic sedimentary rocks uncomformably overlain by 630 m of Cambrian Georgina Basin carbonates. A comprehensive geochemical program designed to provide information about the region’s resource potential was carried out on samples collected at up to 4 meter intervals. This report presents data from Rock-Eval pyrolysis analyses undertaken by Geoscience Australia on selected rock samples to establish their total organic carbon content, hydrocarbon-generating potential and thermal maturity.</div>

A `weighted geometric median’ approach has been used to estimate the median surface reflectance of the barest state (i.e., least vegetation) observed through Landsat-8 OLI observations from 2013 to September 2018 to generate a six-band Landsat-8 Barest Earth pixel composite mosaic over the Australian continent. The bands include BLUE (0.452 - 0.512), GREEN (0.533 - 0.590), RED, (0.636 - 0.673) NIR (0.851 - 0.879), SWIR1 (1.566 - 1.651) and SWIR2 (2.107 - 2.294) wavelength regions. The weighted median approach is robust to outliers (such as cloud, shadows, saturation, corrupted pixels) and also maintains the relationship between all the spectral wavelengths in the spectra observed through time. The product reduces the influence of vegetation and allows for more direct mapping of soil and rock mineralogy. Reference: Dale Roberts, John Wilford, and Omar Ghattas (2018). Revealing the Australian Continent at its Barest, submitted.

This Geoscience Australia Record reports the findings of the Canning Basin Petroleum Systems Modelling Project. The southern, frontier portions of the Canning Basin have numerous potential hydrocarbon play opportunities, in particular unconventional gas plays, which remain untested. Of particular interest are Ordovician-aged petroleum systems. Geoscience Australia in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Western Australia acquired an 872 km long 2D seismic line across the south and south-west Canning Basin in 2018, and drilled the 2680 m stratigraphic hole Barnicarndy 1 in the Barnicarndy Graben to further develop the understanding of hydrocarbon prospectivity in these frontier regions. As part of the Exploring for the Future program Geoscience Australia contracted GNS Science to construct ten 1D petroleum systems models and one 2D model across the frontier southern parts of the basin. The aim was to combine interpretation of the newly acquired seismic data with interpretation of legacy and new well data, in particular organic geochemical data, to improve the understanding of the burial and thermal history, trap formation, generation and migration of hydrocarbons in the southern, frontier parts of the Canning Basin. This Record is a compilation of the work completed by GNS Science International Limited and the reports containing new data collected and analyzed relevant to the petroleum systems modelling.