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Australian Energy Producers Journal Australian Energy Producers Journal Society
Journal of Australian Energy Producers
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Non peer reviewed)

The 2017 offshore acreage release areas: petroleum geological overview

Thomas Bernecker A B , Steve Abbott A , George Bernardel A , Megan Lech A , Ryan Owens A , Tegan Smith A and Jennifer Totterdell A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Geoscience Australia, Resources Division, GPO Box 378, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

B Corresponding author. Email: tom.bernecker@ga.gov.au

The APPEA Journal 57(2) 304-344 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ16029
Accepted: 24 April 2017   Published: 29 May 2017

Abstract

In 2017, 21 new offshore petroleum exploration areas have been released. The majority of the areas are located along the North West Shelf spanning the Westralian Superbasin from the Bonaparte Basin in the north-east to the Northern Carnarvon Basin in the south-west. New areas have been released in offshore south-eastern Australia with new opportunities provided in the Otway, Bass and Gippsland basins. Two large areas in the northern Perth Basin, an offshore frontier, complete the 2017 Acreage Release. All Release Areas are supported by industry nominations and one new cash bid area has been offered in the Dampier Sub-basin.

Geoscience Australia continues to support industry activities by acquiring, interpreting and integrating pre-competitive datasets that are made freely available as part of the agency’s regional petroleum geological studies. A new regional 2D seismic survey was acquired in the Houtman Sub-basin of the Perth Basin, forming the basis of the latest prospectivity study carried out by Geoscience Australia. The results of the study are presented in the technical program of the 2017 APPEA conference. A wealth of seismic and well data, submitted under the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 (OPGSSA) are made available through the National Offshore Petroleum Information Management System (NOPIMS). Additional datasets are accessible through Geoscience Australia’s data repository.

Keywords: acreage release, Bass Basin, Bonaparte Basin, Browse Basin, Gippsland Basin, Houtman Sub-basin, hydrocarbon prospectivity, Northern Carnarvon Basin, offshore frontier, Otway Basin, petroleum exploration, Perth Basin, Roebuck Basin.

Thomas (Tom) Bernecker is a sedimentologist/petroleum geologist who holds an MSc from the University of Aachen, Germany and a PhD from Melbourne’s La Trobe University. He has worked on various coal- and hydrocarbon-bearing basins in Europe and later in Australia where his initial focus was the petroleum geology and the hydrocarbon prospectivity of the Gippsland and Otway basins. Tom joined Geoscience Australia in 2007 as a team leader for the onshore hydrocarbon project. He currently manages the Offshore Acreage Release and Promotion program and is a member of PESA, SEPM and SEAPEX.

Stephen (Steve) Abbott earned his qualifications in sedimentary geology from Flinders (Hons, 1987) and James Cook (PhD, 1994) universities. He joined the Energy Systems Branch at Geoscience Australia in 2013, where he works on regional sequence stratigraphic studies of the North West Shelf. Steve’s past roles include mineral exploration (mainly for sedimentary uranium in central Australia), teaching and research (at Southern Cross University, James Cook University, and the University of Tasmania), and regional mapping with the Northern Territory Geological Survey. Steve is President of PESA-ACT.

George Bernardel holds a BSc (Hons) in geophysics from Sydney University. He has spent most of his career at Geoscience Australia where, as a geoscientist, he has worked mostly on seismic acquisition, processing and interpretation. Recently, he has been working as a basin analyst in the offshore northern Perth Basin.

Megan Lech holds a BSc (honours) in geology from the Australian National University and an MSc in petroleum geoscience from Royal Holloway University London. She has spent most of her career at Geoscience Australia where, as a basin analyst, she has been involved in petroleum, CO2 storage and mineral systems studies in the Browse Basin, Vlaming Sub-basin, offshore North Perth Basin and Calvert/Isa superbasins. She also coordinated the offshore Petroleum Acreage Release program and provided input into Geoscience Australia’s regional geochemical surveys. Megan is currently an ACT branch committee member for PESA.

Ryan Owens is a geoscientist in Geoscience Australia’s Resources Division, Energy Systems Branch. He graduated from the Australian National University in 2007 with a BSc (Hons) in Geology. Subsequently he worked in mineral exploration before undertaking a PhD in paleoceanography at the Research School of Earth Sciences, ANU. Ryan joined the northern Houtman Sub-basin prospectivity study in 2015 after completing the Geoscience Australia graduate program. Member: PESA.

Tegan Smith is a stratigrapher in the Resources Division at Geoscience Australia. She holds a BSc from University of Tasmania (double major in Earth Science and Zoology) and an honours degree from the Australian National University. In 2007 she undertook a PhD at the ANU before joining Geoscience Australia in 2011. She is currently in Geoscience Australia’s Resources Advice and Promotion Branch, working on the Acreage Release product and managing the Stratigraphy and Timescales Project. Tegan is a member of PESA, the Association for Women Geologists (AWG), and Australian Science Communicators (ASC).

Jennifer Totterdell is a principal geologist in the Energy Systems Branch within Geoscience Australia’s Resources Division. Jennie is a graduate of the Australian National University. During her career at Geoscience Australia, Jennie has worked on a range of regional, thematic and basin studies. In the last 15 years, her work has focused on offshore frontier basins, notably the Bight Basin, and has included the production of a petroleum geology inventory for all Australian offshore frontier areas. Her main areas of interest are the structural and stratigraphic evolution, and petroleum potential of basins on Australia’s continental margins.


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