Australia’s onshore basin inventory: volume I

Abstract

Following the publication of Geoscience Australia Record 2014/09: Petroleum geology inventory of Australia’s offshore frontier basins by Totterdell et al (2014), the onshore petroleum section of Geoscience Australia embarked on a similar project for the onshore Australian basins. Volume I of this publication series contains inventories of the McArthur, South Nicholson, Georgina, Amadeus, Warburton, Wiso, Galilee, and Cooper basins. A comprehensive review of the geology, petroleum systems, exploration status, and data coverage for these eight Australian onshore basins was conducted, based on the results of Geoscience Australia’s precompetitive data programs, industry exploration results, and the geoscience literature. A petroleum prospectivity ranking was assigned to each basin, based on evidence for the existence of an active petroleum system. The availability of data and level of knowledge in each area was reflected in a confidence rating for that ranking.

This extended abstract summarises the rankings assigned to each of these eight basins, and describes the type of information available for each of these basins in the publically available report by Carr et al (2016), available on the Geoscience Australia website. The record allocated a high prospectivity rating for the Amadeus and Cooper basins, a moderate rating for the Galilee, McArthur and Georgina basins, and a low rating for the South Nicholson, Warburton and Wiso basins. The record lists how best to access data for each basin, provides an assessment of issues and unanswered questions, and recommends future work directions to lessen the risk of these basins in terms of their petroleum prospectivity. Work is in progress to compile inventories on the next series of onshore basins.