Register      Login
Australian Energy Producers Journal Australian Energy Producers Journal Society
Journal of Australian Energy Producers
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access) (Non peer reviewed)

The Northwest Offshore Otway Basin Well Folio

Duy Nguyen A * , Dianne S. Edwards A , Merrie-Ellen Gunning A and George Bernardel A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

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

* Correspondence to: duy.nguyen@ga.gov.au

The APPEA Journal 62 S461-S466 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ21124
Accepted: 10 March 2022   Published: 13 May 2022

© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of APPEA. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).

Abstract

The Otway Basin is a northwest–southeast trending rift basin which spans from onshore Victoria and South Australia into the deep-water offshore. The prospective supersequences within the basin are largely of Cretaceous age that host three possible petroleum systems (Austral 1, 2 and 3). While there is production from onshore depocentres, and the inboard Shipwreck Trough, the majority of the offshore basin remains underexplored. Recent regional studies have highlighted the need for further work across the underexplored parts of the basin and here we focus on the offshore northwest Otway Basin, integrating reinterpreted historical well data, newly acquired and recently reprocessed seismic data. This new Well Folio consists of composite logs and supporting data, which includes interpreted lithologies, petrophysical analyses, the analysis of historic organic geochemistry and organic petrology. In addition, updated well markers are provided based on seismic interpretation and new biostratigraphy in key wells. This integrated study provides the basis for renewed prospectivity assessment in the northwest offshore portion of the Otway Basin.

Keywords: biostratigraphy, hydrocarbon prospectivity, lithologies, offshore, organic geochemistry, Otway Basin, petrophysical analysis, well data.

Duy (Victor) Nguyen is a Senior Petroleum Engineer in Geoscience Australia’s Resources Division, Energy Systems Branch where he is working on the Browse and Roebuck Basins. He holds BE and ME (Petroleum Engineering) degrees from the University of New South Wales. As part of his degrees, Victor researched the techno-economics of CO2 geological sequestration in Australia. Victor has 5 years of oil and gas industrial experience working for Schlumberger in Australia, Malaysia, India, the Middle East and Africa. Since 2009, Victor has worked on the assessment of the CO2 geological storage potential of the Bonaparte, Gippsland and Browse Basins.

Dianne Edwards is a Senior Petroleum Geochemist in Geoscience Australia’s Resources Division, Energy Systems Branch. Her scientific focus is on defining the petroleum systems of Australia’s petroliferous basins including both conventional and unconventional play types. Dianne received her BSc (Hons) degree in Geology and MSc in Organic Petrology and Organic Geochemistry from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK). She was awarded her PhD from the University of Adelaide in 1996. Dianne is a member of PESA.

Merrie-Ellen Gunning has over 20 years of experience in the Oil and Gas industry where she has performed a diverse range of roles from strategic planning, business development and operations management, to technical roles specialising in geophysics and exploration. Added to this is 5 years of experience in the Aluminium industry across the value chain from extraction, mining bauxite and nepheline, through refining Alumina to smelting. In addition to her extensive knowledge of industry in Australia, her experience has included postings to Indonesia, Norway, the US, Russia and Singapore, and overseeing operations across the world. She has an MBA from Melbourne Business School and a Bachelor of Applied Science in Geology. Merrie-Ellen joined Geoscience Australia in August 2015 and has worked on a wide range of prospectivity and CO2 storage projects, leading the Energy Systems Branch throughout 2017 and is currently Director of Offshore Energy Systems.

George Bernardel is a Geoscientist in the Offshore Energy Systems Branch in the Minerals, Energy and Groundwater Division of Geoscience Australia. He gained his BSc (Honours) in Geophysics from the University of Sydney in 1986 and joined Geoscience Australia in 1995. His current role is the seismic mapping of Cretaceous–Cenozoic sequences and structure across the offshore Otway Basin.


References

Boreham CJ, Hope JM, Jackson P, Davenport R, Earl KL, Edwards DS, Logan GA, Krassay AA (2004) Gas-oil-source correlations in the Otway Basin, southern Australia. In ‘Eastern Australasian Basins Symposium II’. Special Publication, 19–22 September 2004. (Eds PJ Boult, DR Johns, SC Lang) pp. 603–627. (Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia: Adelaide)

Bradshaw MT (1993) Australian petroleum systems. PESA Journal 21, 43–53.

Edwards DS, Struckmeyer HIM, Bradshaw MT, Skinner JE (1999) Geochemical characteristics of Australia’s southern margin petroleum systems. The APPEA Journal 39, 297–321.
Geochemical characteristics of Australia’s southern margin petroleum systems.Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Geoscience Australia (2021a) Regional geology of the Otway Basin. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. Available at https://www.ga.gov.au/__data/assets/word_doc/0007/87073/Regional-Geology-of-the-Otway-Basin_2021.docx [Accessed 16 February 2022]

Geoscience Australia (2021b) Australia’s energy commodity resources 2021. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. Available at https://www.ga.gov.au/digital-publication/aecr2021 [Accessed 16 February 2022]

Geoscience Australia (2022) Australian stratigraphic units database. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. Available at https://www.ga.gov.au/data-pubs/datastandards/stratigraphic-units [Accessed 16 February 2022].

MGPalaeo (2020) Palynological summary sheets. Available at https://www.mgpalaeo.com.au/otway-basin/ [Accessed 16 February 2022]

Schenk O, Grosjean E, Edwards DS, Boreham CJ, West T (2021) New insights into the deep-water Otway Basin – Part 3: petroleum system modelling. The APPEA Journal 61, 665–672.
New insights into the deep-water Otway Basin – Part 3: petroleum system modelling.Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |