The Australian Government formally releases new offshore exploration areas at the annual APPEA conference. The previous two releases were characterised by several large gazetted areas in underexplored regions, a trend that is maintained this year with several frontier areas in excess of 100 graticular blocks on offer. The uptake of new exploration permits in the Bight Basin, the offshore North Perth Basin and the Roebuck Basin indicates a continuing strong industry interest in offshore frontier exploration.

Promotional flyer comprising map showing petroleum exploration permits, pipelines and basins in Australia

This article summarises the report by le Poidevin et al (2015) by briefly discussing three selected areas of the basin where significant petroleum accumulations have been encountered, and provides an interpretation of the effective system(s). For a full description of these and other major petroleum accumulations for the Browse Basin see le Poidevin et al (2015). A summary of the regional geology, evolution and tectonic development of the basin is also documented, along with a discussion concerning the basin's petroleum potential and reserves. The report by le Poidevin et al (2015) also contains appendices of shows by formation and accumulation data summary sheets for the Browse Basin.

These data are a brief description of the sampling (cores, grabs, and dredges) that occurred on Geoscience Australia survey 265 in March 2004 in the visinity of the Bremer sub-basin, offshore southwest Western Australia on CSIRO Marine's research vessel the Southern Surveyor. Co-ordinate location, recovey and a few basic descriptions were recorded whilst on the vessel and have been captured in these datasets.

The Browse Basin lies offshore from Western Australia's Kimberley region and hosts vast accumulations of gas and condensate, making it Australia's next major gas producing province on the North West Shelf. This presentation provides a summary of three areas of the basin where significant petroleum accumulations have been encountered. A summary of the regional geology, evolution and tectonic development of the basin is provided along with a discussion concerning the petroleum potential and reserves of the basin.

The Australian Government formally releases new offshore exploration areas at the annual APPEA conference. These areas are located across various offshore hydrocarbon provinces ranging from mature basins with ongoing oil and gas production, to exploration frontiers. A total of 23 areas are released for work-program bidding and six areas for cash bidding. The two work-program bidding rounds will remain open until 29 October 2015 and 21 April 2016 respectively, while cash bid submissions will close on 4 February 2016. The 2015 Release Areas are located in thirteen distinct regional geological provinces across eight basins and all were supported by industry nominations. Six areas are located in the Bonaparte Basin, two of which are cash bid areas over the Turtle/Barnett oil accumulations. The Browse Basin is represented by three areas in the Caswell Sub-basin and one area on the Yampi Shelf. In support of recent exploration activities and success, one large area has been gazetted in the central Roebuck Basin. The Northern Carnarvon Basin offers eleven areas on the Exmouth Plateau and in the Dampier Sub-basin including four for cash bidding. This year, the usual predominance of North West Shelf Release Areas is counterbalanced by seven large areas in the Bight, Otway, Sorell and Gippsland basins. This includes one area in the Ceduna Sub-basin, three areas in the deep water Otway Basin, one area in the northern Sorell Basin and two areas in the south-eastern Gippsland Basin. Receiving nominations for these areas highlights the industry's interest in evaluating the hydrocarbon potential of Australia's underexplored southern margin. Geoscience Australia continues to support industry activities by acquiring, interpreting and integrating pre-competitive datasets that are made freely available as part of the agency's regional petroleum geological studies.

Promotional flyer comprising map showing petroleum exploration permits and current and proposed gazettal areas for acreage release. map is supplemented by short information (text) about geological aspects of release areas and summeries of Austrlaia's oil and gas production levels.

The Liquid processing facilities of Australia dataset is a combination of a digital data acquired from Petroleum and Marine Division (PMD) and an extensive web search. The dataset is maintained on an ongoing basis, with source material acquired from company websites and state/territory agencies. Each processing unit has information containing the following attributes; NAME, PROJECT, LOCATION, STATE, TYPE, PRODUCT, BY_PRODUCT, STATUS, COMMISSION, OWNER, OPERATOR, PROD_TPD, MAX_TPD, COMMENTS, SOURCE1, SOURCE2, SOURCE3 This dataset has been developed in conjunction with a number of related datasets including gas processing, gas storage, gas pipelines and offshore production platforms. This dataset was designed to create a new liquid processing dataset for Geoscience Australia.

The nannofossil data lists the occurrence of each species of nannofossil in a sample, with semi-quantitative estimates of abundance. Following the list of species, the nannofossil zone (from the zonations of Martini, 1971, Okada & Bukry, 1980, Burnett, 1998, or Watkins et al., 1996), and the geologic stage interpreted from the nannofossil zone.

The Australian Gas Distribution Licences Dataset is comprised of data acquired from state government, state/territory energy regulators, and company websites; and 'State of the Energy Market 2007' published by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER). The dataset is maintained on an ongoing basis, with source material acquired from company websites and state/territory agencies. Each gas distribution licence has information containing the following attributes; Lic_Number, Location, State, Network_Len, Asset_Base, Owner, Operator, Lic_Start, Lic_Expire, Lic_Update, Source1. This dataset has been developed in conjunction with a number of related datasets including electricity distribution licences, and gas and electricity retail licences.