Petroleum Prospectivity of Australia's Offshore Frontier Basins  

Authors / CoAuthors

Totterdell, J. | Hall, L. | Hashimoto, T. | Owen, K. | Bradshaw, M.

Abstract

Oil and gas discoveries in Australia's offshore basins are concentrated on the North West Shelf (Northern Carnarvon, Browse and Bonaparte basins) and Bass Strait (Gippsland, Otway and Bass basins). While discoveries have been made in a few regions outside these areas (e.g. Perth Basin), a large proportion of Australia's offshore basins remain exploration frontiers. However, the decline in oil production from the North West Shelf and Bass Strait basins since 2000 has led to an increasing exploration interest in the frontier basins. There are 35 offshore frontier basins, sub-basins and provinces located on Australia's northern, northwestern, southwestern, southern, southeastern and remote eastern continental margins, where no hydrocarbons have been discovered, but where the presence of hydrocarbon accumulations is considered possible (Figure 1). These basins are diverse in terms of geology, prospectivity and accessibility, ranging from old (e.g. Proterozoic-Paleozoic Arafura Basin) to young (e.g. Mesozoic-Cenozoic Barcoo Sub-basin), from areas widely acknowledged to be highly prospective (e.g. Ceduna Sub-basin) to those where the prospectivity is more difficult to assess (e.g. Sorell Basin), and from the nearshore (e.g. offshore Sydney Basin) to the remote (e.g. New Caledonia Basin). Geoscience Australia recently completed a report on the geology and prospectivity of frontier basins in the Australian Maritime Jurisdiction, titled 'Petroleum Geology Inventory of Australia's Offshore Frontier Basins'. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the geology, petroleum systems, exploration status and data coverage for all offshore frontier basins, sub-basins and provinces, along with an assessment of the critical science questions and exploration uncertainties for each area. This work draws on the results of Geoscience Australia's pre-competitive data programs conducted from 2003 to 2011, as well as exploration results and the geoscience literature. The study assigns a petroleum prospectivity ranking to each basin, based on the presence or absence of evidence for the existence of active petroleum systems (Table 1). The availability of data and level of knowledge in each area is reflected in a confidence rating for that ranking (Table 2). While the prospectivity of some areas is widely acknowledged to be high (e.g. Ceduna Sub-basin), the perception of prospectivity in many basins is negatively affected by the amount or quality of data available. In these basins, the acquisition of new data or targeted research could make a significant difference to the understanding of petroleum potential and likelihood of exploration success.

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nonGeographicDataset

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82412

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• External Publication

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• marine

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Earth Sciences

• Published_Internal

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2014-01-01T00:00:00

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