Unconventional hydrocarbons: Australia’s old rocks prove their worth
Marita Bradshaw A , Chris Boreham A , Lidena Carr A , John Laurie A , Lisa Hall A , Dianne Edwards A , Tegan Smith A and Andrew Stacey AGeoscience Australia.
The APPEA Journal 53(2) 472-472 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ12083
Published: 2013
Abstract
Australia’s search for petroleum began in the onshore basins where extensive areas of Paleozoic marine sequences, with some high-quality source rock intervals and spectacular outcrop, encouraged sporadic exploration for many decades. For these efforts, there were some rewards, including the discovery of the Mereenie oil field in Ordovician rocks, the Amadeus Basin in 1960s, and the Blina discovery in Devonian carbonates in the Canning Basin during the early 1980s. Since the late 1980s, however, the focus of exploration has shifted offshore where more and larger discoveries were made in the Mesozoic marginal basins, which today contain about 90% or more of Australia’s conventional oil and gas. Now, however, the focus has shifted back to the onshore, recognising the potential for shale and tight gas and oil in these older rocks. The onshore basin area under exploration license has nearly doubled from 2010 to 2012; several major international companies have joined local explorers in testing the worth of Australia’s lower Paleozoic and Proterozoic petroleum systems, and new discoveries have been made in several basins. Geoscience Australia and its partners in the state and NT surveys are undertaking new assessments and studies across a number of these basins.
Marita Bradshaw is senior science adviser, energy division at Geoscience Australia. Her work has focused on the petroleum prospectivity of Australia and has included leading a program of new data acquisition in offshore frontier basins. In addition to her work with government, she has worked as a petroleum geologist for ESSO Australia and WMC. She has a BSc from the University of Sydney and PhD from UWA and was awarded the Lewis G Weeks gold medal for contributions to petroleum exploration by APPEA in 2007. Member: PESA, GSA, SEAPEX. |
Chris Boreham obtained a PhD (inorganic chemistry) from ANU in 1978 and has worked at Geoscience Australia since 1980. He is an internationally recognised petroleum geochemist with more than three decades of experience in the application of organic geochemistry to the evolution of oil and gas in sedimentary basins. More recently, he has extended these geochemical studies to unconventional petroleum (coal seam methane, shale gas, and oil). He also leads key aspects of the CO2CRC’s studies about the injection of CO2 into a depleted natural gas field and a saline aquifer. |
Lidena Carr is a geologist in the basin resources group in the energy division at Geoscience Australia. In 2004, she graduated from ANU with a BA/BSc (geology and human ecology) (hons) and then began work as a technical officer at the Research School of Earth Sciences, ANU. She joined Geoscience Australia in 2007 where she has held numerous positions; she is now working in the unconventional hydrocarbons section. |
John Laurie is a senior research scientist in Geoscience Australia and has a BSc (Hons 1) in geology from the University of Newcastle and a PhD in palaeontology from the University of Tasmania. After a brief period as a regional mapper in the Northern Territory Geological Survey in Alice Springs, he joined BMR (now Geoscience Australia) in 1982 as a palaeontologist in the Timescales project. He has published over 80 research papers and has been co-author of two volumes of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. John is also editor-in-chief of the Memoirs of the Association of Australasian Palaeontologists. |
Lisa is a research scientist at Geoscience Australia’s energy division. Her present research is focused on unconventional hydrocarbon resource assessments and petroleum systems modelling in various Australian basins. She holds an MSc (geology and geophysics) from Cambridge University (1999) and a PhD (structural geology and neotectonics) from Oxford University (2003). |
Dianne Edwards is a senior petroleum geochemist at Geoscience Australia and is presently involved with the offshore acreage release and petroleum prospectivity products and promotions group. Her scientific focus is on the resource assessment of undiscovered unconventional hydrocarbons in Australia’s onshore basins as part of the onshore hydrocarbons project. She is undertaking organic geochemical studies about oils, gases, and source rocks of the Georgina Basin. She is also undertaking hydrocarbon migration studies in the Gippsland Basin as a member of the CCS Gippsland Project. She has extensive experience on the petroleum systems of the North West Shelf, Canning, and Otway basins. She received her BSc (hons) (geology) and MSc (organic petrology and organic geochemistry) from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. She was awarded a PhD from the University of Adelaide. Member: PESA and the European Association of Organic Geochemists. |
Tegan Smith is a biostratigrapher in the basin resources group at Geoscience Australia. She completed a BSc (Earth science and zoology) at the University of Tasmania then joined ANU for her honours year. In 2007, she undertook a PhD at ANU then joined Geoscience Australia in 2011. She started her present position with the Basin Resources Group in early 2012. |
Andrew Stacey is leader of the unconventional hydrocarbons section, basin resources group in the energy division at Geoscience Australia. |
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