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90% coverage nth west F55/B1-1

O.D.N.L. Penola No. 1 Well, located in the north-east corner of Section 500, Hundred of Penola, South Australia, was drilled by Oil Development N.L. under a "farm-out" agreement with General Exploration Company of Australia Limited to a total depth of 4985 feet. Drilling was commenced on 7th February, 1961, and the well was abondoned as a dry hole on 5th May, 1961. The drilling contractor was Australian Tube Wells Pty Ltd, and the rig used was a Failing 2500 - Holemaster. The operation provided for a programme of electric and mud logging, testing and coring. The Penola Well was designed to test the petroleum potentialities of the Coonawarra subsurface structure, which was first detected by a single reconnaissance seismic reflection traverse made through the Penola area. Beneath a thin Pleistocene cover Penola No. 1 penetrated a sequence of marine and paralic Tertiary, and marine and non-marine Mesozoic rocks, ranging in age from Oligocene to probable Upper Jurassic. The Tertiary sediments consisted of 215 feet of Gambier Limestone (Oligocene); 160 feet of Compton Conglomerate (Oligocene); followed by about 630 feet of paralic sands and grits of the Knight Group (middle to upper Eocene). There is a marked discontinuity at l040 feet where the well passed abruptly from the Eocene to Cretaceous arkosic sandstones and siltstones of the Merino Group. The Upper Member of the Runnymede Formation of Albian to (?) Cenomanian age was 2380 feet thick, and of marine origin in at least the lower 800 feet, between 2586 and 3420 feet. The lower nonmarine member of the Runnymede Formation (? Aptian) was represented between 3420 and 4300 feet. A slight angular unconformity is interpreted at about 4300 feet, below which the well is considered to have entered non-marine mudstones and sandstones of the Mocamboro Member of probable Upper Jurassic age. Minor showings of gas were encountered at Penola No. 1, none being of commerial significance. No signs of live oil were observed in the well.

In late 1959, Union Oil Development Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Union Oil Company of California, and the Kern County Land Company, also of California, entered into an agreement with Australian Oil and Gas Corporation Limited to conduct an exploration programme on lands of Authority to Prospect 57P, Queensland, and Petroleum Exploration Licences E2, E6, E7, and EB, New South Wales. As part of the programme, surface geological studies were made of the concessions and adjoining areas. This report is concerned primarily with this aspect of the exploration. The surface reconnaissance was carried out intermittently from November, 1960 to October, 1961. The area reconnoitred, approximately 40,000 square miles, is bounded roughly by the towns of Rolleston and Banana in Queensland and Narrabri and Inverell in New South Wales (Fig. 1). The region is accessible by several major paved highways and a connecting network of dirt roads and stock trails. Department of the Army 1: 250 ,000 sheets were used as a base map for the work; planimetric control was by car odometer and elevation control, where required, by aneroid barometer. Field samples, both lithologic and palaeontologic, are indexed on the geological maps and are stored at the offices of Union Oil Development Corporation, Toowoomba, Queensland.

An aeromagnetic survey and a gravity survey were carried out for Magellan Petroleum Corporation in the Tambo-Augathella area of Queensland in 1959-1960. The results of the aeromagnetic survey were reduced, studied, and interpreted by Aero Service Corporation, who had subcontracted Adastra Airways Pty Ltd, to provide the aircraft and also the flying personnel and associated ground staff. The gravity survey was done by Century Geophysical Corporation. The main objectives of the two surveys were to delineate the thickness of the sedimentary rocks, and to investigate the major geological structures in the area. The results of the aeromagnetic survey suggested the presence of several structures in the basement rocks. The Nebine Ridge appeared to be quite shallow over most of the area; major east-west trending faults were indicated. The results of the gravity survey did not fully agree with the results of the aeromagnetic survey. The gravity results indicate a central basinal feature bounded on the west by a platform, but the aeromagnetic results indicate deep basement on the north-west and only a few thousand feet of sediments to the south and east. These conflicting results indicate that some additional control, as would be obtained from wells drilled for stratigraphic information, is necessary for evaluation of the respective surveys.

The present work has been undertaken as part of a long-term project of describing the Permian pelecypod and gastropod faunas of Western Australia and western Northern Territory and of assessing their stratigraphical significance. Two portions have already appeared (Dickins, 1956; 1957). In the first paper pelecypods from earlier collections obtained from various parts of the sequence in the Carnarvon Basin were described; and in the second the earliest Permian (Sakmarian) pelecypod and gastropod fauna from the Lyons Group and the Carrandibby Formation. Other current work in palaeontology is being undertaken by B. E. Balme (pollen and microplankton), B. F. Glenister (ammonoids), G. M. Philip (crinoids and blastoids), June R. P. Ross (bryozoans), and G. A. Thomas (brachiopods). For faunal studies, the Permian rocks of the western part of Australia have the merit that the Lower Permian* has a complex of changing marine faunas which allow a detailed study of their phylogeny and range. The value of this sequence is enhanced by the presence of marine Upper Permian in the Fitzroy and Bonaparte Gulf Basins. It represents as complete a marine Permian sequence as any in Australia, if not the most complete, and is rivalled only by that of the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. The collections used have been mainly from the Geology Department of the University of Western Australia and from the Museum of the Geological Branch of the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics, Canberra. The Bureau of Mineral Resources collections include material from West Australian Petroleum Pty Limited.

pt. 1. Igneous and metamorphic -- pt. 2. Sedimentary rocks -- pt. 3. Igneous and metamorphic

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