New insights into reservoir sand provenance in the Exmouth Plateau and Browse Basin*
P. Southgate A , K. Sircombe A and C. Lewis AGeoscience Australia.
The APPEA Journal 51(2) 715-715 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ10095
Published: 2011
Abstract
A pilot study to determine if zircons present in reservoir facies of the North West Shelf can be used to identify provenance and sediment transport pathways has analysed samples from three wells: Guardian-1 and Hijinx-1 (Carnarvon Basin), and Burnside-1 (Browse Basin). Operating companies Chevron, Santos and Hess collected 3–5 kg of cuttings from sandstone bodies intersected in the three wells. Samples were sent to Geoscience Australia for zircon separation and analysis at the Geochronology Laboratory on a sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe (SHRIMP).
To provide a statistically meaningful representation of ages in each sample, 70–80 grains were randomly selected for analysis. During the past 20 years, Geoscience Australia and the state geological surveys of WA, NT, Queensland and SA, together with the ANU, UWA and Curtin University, have analysed zircons found in igneous and sedimentary rocks that outcrop in WA and central Australia. This analysis has been done to determine the ages of emplacement, extrusion or maximum depositional ages.
This dataset permits the ages of potential onshore provenance areas to be differentiated; hence, correlations can be made between zircons contained within the transported sands and their potential source regions from onshore Australia.
In this extended abstract, the spectrum of ages in each sample will be shown, and potential provenance and sediment transport pathways will be discussed. The abstract concludes with the outline of a 2–3-year project to obtain a dataset that will provide a regional stratigraphic and spatial coverage of the North West Shelf for provenance studies.
Peter Southgate has worked as a basin analyst at Geoscience Australia for 28 years. His experience includes: the analysis of onshore Palaeoproterozoic basins of the Mt Isa-McArthur region to determine fluid migration pathways for Pb-Zn-Ag deposits for the minerals industry and Palaeozoic basins of central and western Australia for the petroleum industry. Peter is group leader for the Petroleum Prospectivity and Promotions Group in the petroleum and marine division at Geoscience Australia. |
Keith Sircombe earned a BSc and an MSc in Earth and computer sciences at the University of Waikato, New Zealand (1990, 1993) with a thesis investigating the seismic sequence stratigraphy of the South Westland Basin offshore of the South Island, New Zealand. His PhD (1998) at ANU investigated the detrital mineral geochronology provenance of ancient and modern sediments in east and west Australia. Detrital geochronology investigations continued at the GSC (1998–2000) with metasedimentary sequences in the Slave Craton and, from 2001, at UWA, he investigated the detrital provenance evolution of the Proterozoic Ashburton Basin between the Pilbara and Yilgarn cratons. He moved to Geoscience Australia in 2003 and became the SHRIMP Laboratory Manager in 2008. |
Christopher Lewis is a junior geologist at Geoscience Australia. Chris graduated from Adelaide University in 2009 after receiving his BSc (Hons) and joined Geoscience Australia as a new graduate. Chris’s area of research is in detrital zircon and heavy mineral provenance used to assist palaeogeographic reconstructions and determination of possible sediment transport pathways. Other interests include the tectonic and basin evolution of Australian continental margins. Member: PESA. |
References
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