Australia’s onshore basin inventory: volume I
Lidena Carr A , Russell Korsch A and Tehani Palu AGeoscience Australia.
The APPEA Journal 56(2) 591-591 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ15097
Published: 2016
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.
Lidena Carr is a geologist in the onshore energy systems section in the resources division at Geoscience Australia. She graduated from the Australian National University (ANU), majoring in geology and human geography with a BA/BSc (Hons) in 2004, and began working as a technical officer at the Research School of Earth Sciences (ANU). In 2007 Lidena joined Geoscience Australia, before moving to her present position in early 2009. She is a member of PESA and the Geological Society of Australia. |
Russell Korsch retired from the resources division at Geoscience Australia in 2012, but has continued to work part-time on the evolution of Australia’s onshore sedimentary basins, and the interpretation of deep seismic reflection data to understand the development of sedimentary basins and basement terrains, as well as the relationships between the two. He has a BSc (Hons), PhD, and DipEd from the University of New England and is a member of the Geological Society of Australia. |
Tehani Palu is a geoscientist in the onshore energy systems section in the resources division at Geoscience Australia. She gained her master’s degree from the University of Waikato (New Zealand) in 2009 and joined Geoscience Australia shortly after completing her studies. She has since been involved with various projects including greenhouse gas monitoring for carbon capture and storage, petroleum acreage products in collaboration with the Department of Industry and Science, and petroleum systems modelling. Tehani has been in her present role since 2013, which sees her doing basin analysis and petroleum systems modelling within the energy systems branch. She is a member of PESA. |
References
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