Legacy product - no abstract available

Australia's North West Shelf (NW Shelf) has been the premier hydrocarbon exploration and production province for over 30 years. Despite the large number of geological studies completed in this region, numerous geological questions remain to be answered such as the provenance of reservoir units and how this relates to reservoir quality, extent and correlation. Submission of offshore sample material by explorers on the NW Shelf has allowed U-Pb age results to be determined; providing insights into the potential provenance and sedimentary transport pathways of various Triassic to Cretaceous reservoir facies. Initial results reveal that the proximal Pilbara, Yilgarn and Kimberly cratons were not major proto-sources during the Middle to Upper Triassic. The prospective, Mungaroo Formation appears to display a Triassic volcanic signature; the source of which remains enigmatic, but numerous grain characteristics suggest a source proximal to the Exmouth Plateau. Many samples show a Gondwana Assemblage age. Sediment sources of this age are absent on the Australian continent suggesting a distal origin - most likely the Antarctic and Indian blocks. Transport pathways, for the Triassic Mungaroo Formation, are interpreted as possibly northward through a proto-Perth Basin or north-westward through the Gascoyne-Hamersley-Pilbara regions. Other results suggest subtle differences in provenance of the sediments between the Exmouth Plateau and Rankin Platform, and that the provenance signatures of the Bonaparte, Canning and Perth basins show distinctively different provenance signatures.

1. Blevin et al.:Hydrocarbon prospectivity of the Bight Basin - petroleum systems analysis in a frontier basin 2. Boreham et al : Geochemical Comparisons Between Asphaltites on the Southern Australian Margin and Cretaceous Source Rock Analogues 3. Brown et al: Anomalous Tectonic Subsidence of the Southern Australian Passive Margin: Response to Cretaceous Dynamic Topography or Differential Lithospheric Stretching? 4. Krassay and Totterdell : Seismic stratigraphy of a large, Cretaceous shelf-margin delta complex, offshore southern Australia 5. Ruble et al : Geochemistry and Charge History of a Palaeo-Oil Column: Jerboa-1, Eyre Sub-Basin, Great Australian Bight 6. Struckmeyer et al : Character, Maturity and Distribution of Potential Cretaceous Oil Source Rocks in the Ceduna Sub-Basin, Bight Basin, Great Australian Bight 7. Struckmeyer et al: The role of shale deformation and growth faulting in the Late Cretaceous evolution of the Bight Basin, offshore southern Australia 8. Totterdell et al : A new sequence framework for the Great Australian Bight: starting with a clean slate 9. Totterdell and Bradshaw : The structural framework and tectonic evolution of the Bight Basin 10. Totterdell and Krassay : The role of shale deformation and growth faulting in the Late Cretaceous evolution of the Bight Basin, offshore southern Australia

Abstract for initial submission, pending acceptance by convention technical program committee.

A short article describing the outcomes of the Tasman Frontier Petroleum Industry Workshop held at Geoscience Australia on 8 and 9 March 2012.

Speculation is increasing that Proterozoic eastern Australia and western Laurentia represent conjugate rift margins formed during breakup of the NUNA supercontinent and thus share a common history of rift-related basin formation and magmatism. In Australia, this history is preserved within three stacked superbasins formed over 200 Myr in the Mount Isa region (1800-1750 Ma Leichhardt, 1730-1670 Ma Calvert and 1670-1575 Ma Isa), elements of which extend as far east as Georgetown. The Mount Isa basins developed on crystalline basement of comparable (~1840 Ma) age to that underlying the Paleoproterozoic Wernecke Supergroup and Hornby Bay Basin in NW Canada which share a similar tripartite sequence stratigraphy. Sedimentation in both regions was accompanied by magmatism at 1710 Ma, further supporting the notion of a common history. Basin formation in NW Canada and Mount Isa both concluded with contractional orogenesis at ~1600 Ma. Basins along the eastern edge of Proterozoic Australia are characterised by a major influx of sediment derived from juvenile volcanic rocks at ~1655 Ma and a significant Archean input, as indicated by Nd isotopic and detrital zircon data. A source for both these modes is currently not known in Australia although similar detrital zircon populations are documented in the Hornby Bay Basin, and in the Wernecke Supergroup, and juvenile 1660-1620 Ma volcanism occurs within Hornby Bay basin NW Canada. These new data are most consistent with a northern SWEAT-like tectonic reconstruction in a NUNA assembly thus giving an important constraint on continental reconstructions that predate Rodinia.

Legacy product - no abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

Summary of forward gravity and flexure modelling of the New Caledonia Trough to highlight temporal variations in lithospheric rigidity during its evolution.

Legacy product - no abstract available