There remains considerable uncertainty regarding the location, timing and availability of CO2 storage sites in both southeast Queensland and New South Wales. In New South Wales, the main issues relate to the lack of recent or reliable valid geological information that would permit a complete and comprehensive evaluation. Some sedimentary basins appear to contain potential storage reservoirs although they have low permeabilities, and are therefore likely to have low injection rates. In southeast Queensland, recent work has indicated that in some parts of the Bowen and Surat basins CO2 storage is likely to compete with other resources such as groundwater and hydrocarbons. However, current research on the potential storage in deeper saline formations in the southern and western Bowen Basin has provided encouraging results. Storage in deeper stratigraphic units in the central western part of the basin will rely on injection in low permeability formations, and more correlation work is required to define generally narrow storage targets. The Wunger Ridge, in the southern Bowen Basin, however, has promise with both significant storage potential and relatively low geological risk. One area in which there is some potential in both New South Wales and southeast Queensland is CO2 storage in coal seams, as close technical and economic relationships exist between coal bed methane (CBM) field development and operations and CO2 storage. Substantial collaborative research is still required in this area and is currently a focus of the CO2CRC activities

Initial 2D seismic survey using mini-vibroseis with high frequency band 10 - 150Hz. This seismic survey is part of the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) projects.

The greater Eromanga Basin is an intracratonic Mesozoic basin covering an area approximately 2,000,000 km2 in central and eastern Australia. The greater Eromanga Basin encompasses three correlated basins: the Eromanga Basin (central and western regions), Surat Basin (eastern region) and the Carpentaria Basin (northern region). The greater Eromanga Basin hosts Australia's largest known reserves of groundwater and onshore hydrocarbons and also contains extensive geothermal and uranium systems. The basin has also demonstrated potential as a greenhouse gas sequestration site and will likely play an intrinsic role in securing Australia's energy future. A 3D geological map has been constructed for the greater Eromanga Basin using publicly available datasets. These are principally compiled drilling datasets (i.e. water bores; mineral and petroleum exploration wells) and 1:1,000,000 scale surface geology map of Australia. Geophysical wireline logs, hydrochemistry and radiometrics datasets were also integrated into the 3D geological map

The Petrel Sub-basin Marine Environmental Survey GA-0335, (SOL5463) was undertaken by the RV Solander during May 2012 as part of the Commonwealth Government's National Low Emission Coal Initiative (NLECI). The survey was undertaken as a collaboration between the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and GA. The purpose was to acquire geophysical and biophysical data on shallow (less then 100m water depth) seabed environments within two targeted areas in the Petrel Sub-basin to support investigation for CO2 storage potential in these areas. This dataset has analysis of Chlorin and geochemmistry for samples taken on survey.

We present a probabilistic tectonic hazard analysis of a site in the Otway Basin,Victoria, Australia, as part of the CO2CRC Otway Project for CO2 storage risk. The study involves estimating the likelihood of future strong earthquake shaking and associated fault displacements from natural tectonic processes that could adversely impact the storage process at the site. Three datasets are used to quantify the tectonic hazards at the site: (1) active faults; (2) historical seismicity, and; (3) GPS surface velocities. Our analysis of GPS data reveals strain rates at the limit of detectability and not significantly different from zero. Consequently, we do not develop a GPS-based source model for this Otway Basin model. We construct logic trees to capture epistemic uncertainty in both the fault and seismicity source parameters, and in the ground motion prediction. A new feature for seismic hazard modelling in Australia, and rarely dealt with in low-seismicity regions elsewhere, is the treatment of fault episodicity (long-term activity versus inactivity) in the Otway model. Seismic hazard curves for the combined (fault and distributed seismicity) source model show that hazard is generally low, with peak ground acceleration estimates of less than 0.1g at annual probabilities of 10-3-10-4/yr. The annual probability for tectonic displacements of greater than or equal to 1m at the site is even lower, in the vicinity of 10-8-10-9/yr. The low hazard is consistent with the intraplate tectonic setting of the region, and unlikely to pose a significant hazard for CO2 containment and infrastructure.

The CO2CRC Otway Project in southwestern Victoria is the Australian flagship for geological storage of CO2. Phase 1 of the project involved the injection of a CO2-rich supercritical fluid into a depleted natural gas field at a depth of ~2 km. The project reached a major milestone late last year with the cessation of injection and the emplacement of around 65,000 tonnes of the supercritical fluid. Phase 2 of the project is set to commence in early 2011 with the injection a few 100 tonnes of pure CO2 into a saline aquifer at ~1.5 km depth. Critical to the project was the drilling of the CRC-1 and CRC-2 wells, with both being used as injection wells. During drilling of each well, fluorescein dye was added to the drilling mud with the intention to maintain a concentration of 5 ppm w/v. The role of fluorescein was to 1) quantitated the degree of drilling fluid contamination that may accompany autochonthous formation waters recovered with the multiple dynamic testing (MDT) tool, and 2) provide a measure of the depth of drilling mud penetration into the recovered cores in order to provide pristine material for microbiological studies.

This is a 5.48 minute long movie demonstrating Carbon Capture Technologies as one of the range of solutions that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Using 3D Max animation we show how carbon dioxide is captured at the source of emissions (coal fired power stations for example), and permanently storing them deep underground. The movie has professional narration explaining the story, throughout.

The Petrel Sub-basin Marine Survey GA-0335 (SOL5463) was undertaken on RV Solander during May 2012 as part of the Commonwealth Government's National Low Emission Coal Initiative (NLECI). The survey was a collaboration between the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and GA. The purpose was to acquire geophysical and biophysical data on shallow (less than 100 m water depth) seabed environments within two targeted areas in the Petrel Sub-basin to support the investigation of CO2 storage potential in these areas. Unconsolidated surface (seabed) sediments were collected at 11 sampling stations using a Smith_McIntyre grab (10L volume). Sediment samples were collected to provide data on a) sedimentology, b) infauna and c) the geochemical composition of the sediments. For the sedimentology (this dataset) up to 250 g of sediment was sub-sampled from the surface (0-2 cm) of the sediment recovered in the Smith_McIntyre grabs. Sub-samples were described from visual inspection, noting grain size, sorting and composition and these were stored in plastic bags and refrigerated. These were subsequently analysed at the GA laboratories to provide information on the texture and composition of the sediments at the sampling locations. Grain size measurement was undertaken by wet sieving to determine mud (<63 microns), sand (63-2000 microns) and gravel (>2000 microns) fractions as percentage of dry weight. A separate sub-sample (~1g) was used for laser diffraction measurement of the mud and sand fractions using a Malvern Mastersizer 2000, with results expressed as percentage of the total particle volume based on an average of three measurements on each sample. Particle size distributions including mean, median, and standard deviation, together with skewness and kurtosis indices were calculated. Separate sample splits were taken for measurement of the carbonate content using the carbonate bomb method following Muller and Gastner (1979).

A study of the geological prospectivity for carbon dioxide subsurface storage in selected member economies of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) region was recently completed. The study is part of a multi-phase program of the APEC Energy Working Group to promote sustainable energy development within the APEC community. APEC economies considered in this study including the Republic of Korea, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Chinese Taipei and Thailand. The objective of the study is to establish a sound understanding of the relationship between the key emission sources and the prospective basins that may contain potential storage sites, and to derive a qualitative assessment of whether the storage potential available in a specific country will meet its storage requirements through the foreseeable future. China has very high emissions and moderate to high prospectivity for storage and Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have moderate emissions and moderate storage prospectivity. The Philippines have low emissions and low storage prospectivity, whereas the Republic of Korea and Chinese Taipei both have high emissions and low storage prospectivity.

Geoscience Australia undertook a marine survey of the Leveque Shelf (survey number SOL5754/GA0340), a sub-basin of the Browse Basin, in May 2013. This survey provides seabed and shallow geological information to support an assessment of the CO2 storage potential of the Browse sedimentary basin. The basin, located on the Northwest Shelf, Western Australia, was previously identified by the Carbon Storage Taskforce (2009) as potentially suitable for CO2 storage. The survey was undertaken under the Australian Government's National CO2 Infrastructure Plan (NCIP) to help identify sites suitable for the long term storage of CO2 within reasonable distances of major sources of CO2 emissions. The principal aim of the Leveque Shelf marine survey was to look for evidence of any past or current gas or fluid seepage at the seabed, and to determine whether these features are related to structures (e.g. faults) in the Leveque Shelf area that may extend to the seabed. The survey also mapped seabed habitats and biota to provide information on communities and biophysical features that may be associated with seepage. This research, combined with deeper geological studies undertaken concurrently, addresses key questions on the potential for containment of CO2 in the basin's proposed CO2 storage unit, i.e. the basal sedimentary section (Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous), and the regional integrity of the Jamieson Formation (the seal unit overlying the main reservoir).