Petroleum Systems Modelling for Unconventional Play Analysis in the Cooper Basin

The Cooper Basin is a late Carboniferous - Middle Triassic intracratonic basin in north-eastern South Australia and south-western Queensland. The basin is currently Australia's premier onshore hydrocarbon producing province and hosts a range of unconventional gas play types, including the extensive basin-centred and tight gas accumulations in the Permian Gidgealpa Group, deep dry coal seam gas associated with the Patchawarra and Toolachee formations, as well as the shale gas plays in the Murteree and Roseneath shales.

This study uses petroleum systems modelling as a tool to investigate the prospectivity of each unconventional gas play type across the basin. Existing published structure surfaces were updated to incorporate new seismic and well data interpretations and combined into a regional 3D basin model, ensuring seamless data integration across the state border. All publicly-available total organic carbon (TOC) and RockEval data were compiled and used to review source rock distribution and quality, demonstrating the abundance of viable source rock intervals across the basin. Cooper Basin-specific kinetic relationships allowed the estimation of oil and gas windows. All datasets were integrated into a multi-1D petroleum systems model, which was calibrated using vitrinite reflectance and corrected temperature for 90 wells. Petroleum system model outputs, including thermal maturity and hydrocarbon generation, expulsion and retention maps by source interval, were then used to characterise possible play fairway extents for each play type.

The hydrocarbon generation maps and play fairway areas for the basin centred gas and deep dry coal seam gas plays of the Toolachee and Patchawarra formations highlight that these play types are both more extensive and more prospective than the Roseneath and Murteree shale gas plays. However, the overlapping nature of all three play types makes it more convenient to consider them collectively as a composite Gidgealpa Group unconventional gas play. The composite Gidgealpa Group gas play fairway map shows that the Nappamerri and Allunga troughs are highly prospective, along with the deepest areas of the Patchawarra and Arrabury troughs. Results also indicate prospectivity potential for unconventional gas further to the northeast, including areas of the Windorah Tough and Ullenbury Depression, consistent with recent drilling results. Further potential may exist in shallower coal plays outside the composite resource play area.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Publication)
2015-01-01T00:00:00
Citation identifier
Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/87812

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.S.

 4
Author

Palu, T.J.

 5
Author

Troup, A

 6
Author

Boreham, C.J.

 7
Point of contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Custodian

RD
Owner

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Custodian

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information
Maintenance and update frequency
Not planned

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

  • PowerPoint

Keywords

  • SA

  • QLD

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

  • Earth Sciences

Keywords

  • Published_External

Resource constraints

Title

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

Alternate title

CC-BY

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

Download the presentation (pdf)

Distribution format

  • pdf

Resource lineage

Statement

NA

Hierarchy level
Non geographic dataset
Other

PowerPoint

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/20d87e68-ae76-db47-e053-10a3070a5002

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/87812

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/20d87e68-ae76-db47-e053-10a3070a5002

Date info (Revision)
2018-04-22T08:16:59
Date info (Creation)
2015-09-29T00:00:00

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

Associated resources

Not available