Australia's frontier basins and prospects for new petroleum provinces.

Marita Bradshaw, Clinton Foster, Barry Willcox & Heike Struckmeyer. Geoscience Australia, GPO Box 378, Canberra A.C.T., 2601, Australia marita.bradshaw@ga.gov.au

Abstract
Within Australia's marine jurisdiction (AMJ) there are at least ten deepwater basins related to Mesozoic rifted margins that have the potential to contribute at least one new petroleum province of global significance. Current offshore exploration activity in Australia is focussed around giant fields in the north west (North West Shelf) and in the south east (Bass Strait) quadrants of the AMJ, representing less than one percent of the prospective acreage. Frontier basins in deepwater along Australia's southern and eastern margins are vastly underexplored with only three exploration wells having been drilled in water depths beyond 500 metres and limited, sometimes only regional, seismic coverage. Despite this minimal exploration, active petroleum systems are indicated by remote sensing techniques (SAR, ALF), seismic evidence of bottom simulating reflectors (BSRs), flat spots and gas escape structures, beach strandings of asphaltites, and oil and gas shows in the few wells in this region. Key prospects for hydrocarbon exploration in the future include the basins of the Great Australian Bight, the west Tasmanian margin and the Lord Howe Rise. Australia's southern margin is conjugate with Antarctica and was the site of a major Mesozoic rift valley system approximately 4,000 kilometres long. At its eastern end the giant Gippsland Basin fields were discovered in the 1960s, but the western two-thirds of the margin is essentially unexplored. A giant Late Cretaceous delta complex is apparent even on present day bathymetry. It is comparable in area to the Niger Delta, with prograding sequences up to 5,000 metres thick. These sand-rich sequences overlie mobile units representing Albian and Turonian marine shales; and the total sedimentary section is up to 15,000 metres thick. Along the western margin of Tasmania and on the South Tasman Rise the break-up had a strong trans-current component producing a series of strike-slip basins up to 6,000 metres thick. Restricted marine environments were maintained along this part of the margin until the final separation of Australia and Antarctica in the Oligocene. The Lord Howe Rise is a large continental fragment lying between Australia, New Caledonia and New Zealand in the Tasman Sea. It covers an area of 740,000 square kilometres in waters shallower than 3000 metres. It is underlain by a number of sedimentary basins, some in excess of 4,000 metres thick. BSRs indicative of gas hydrates, flat spots and diapiric features have been observed on the limited seismic coverage.

Introduction
Australia's marine jurisdiction covers 14.2 million square kilometres and is more than one and a half times its onshore land area. Much of this area is underlain by sedimentary basins (Figure 1). There has been significant exploration and production in the shallow waters of Bass Strait and the North West Shelf and much potential remains there. However, in the deep offshore, especially along the virtually unexplored southern margin, there is the opportunity for Australia to contribute a whole new petroleum province in the 21st century. Global discovery of true giant oil fields (a billion barrels and more) has been in decline since the 1960s, but in the 1990s this trend was partly reversed by a string of discoveries from the deep water basins along the conjugate Atlantic margins of Brazil and West Africa. Advances in deepwater drilling and production technology opened up these new areas for exploration and the reward was the return to discovery field sizes reminiscent of the first steps into the shallow offshore in the 1950s and 1960s.

Figure 1. Map of exploration maturity of Australian basins showing producing basins, those with flows and shows and unexplored areas. A - East Tasman Plateau depocentre; B - Area with sediments thicker than 2,000 m on and adjacent to the Lord Howe Rise21; C - Area of the Ninene Basin with sediments estimated at thicker than 22 2,000 m, South Tasman Rise ; D - Southern Margin Basins in the Great Australian Bight3. Australia had been part of the earlier bonanza. In the late 1960s billion barrel oil fields were found in the Eocene reservoirs of the Gippsland Basin under the shallow waters of Bass Strait. That success was preceded by 100 years exploration activity in the older rocks of the onshore basins which had yielded only modest finds of gas and oil, predominantly derived from Palaeozoic source rocks1. It is likely that Australia will also figure in the new flush of giant discoveries as the global exploration campaign moves to waters deeper than 500 metres along Mesozoic rifted margins. Australia already has giant fields listed in the role call from the 1990s (Sunrise/Troubadour and Chrysaor/Dionysus2) but these are gas accumulations on the North West Shelf, mainly sourced from fluvio-deltaic Triassic and Early to Middle Jurassic sequences. The great hope for giant oil discoveries is on Australia's southern margin where many lines of evidence point to the existence of a rich marine mid-Cretaceous oil source.

Australia's Identified Petroleum Reserves

The continent of Australia has a great variety of geology, petroleum systems and play types. There are productive reservoirs ranging in age from Cambrian to Eocene (Figure 2); proven source rocks in Cainozoic, Mesozoic, Palaeozoic and Proterozoic sequences; and clastic, 1 carbonate, evaporite, marine and non-marine facies are all well represented . Some 25 petroliferous basins have been identified in Australia, and there is production from nine of these basins. Over 95% of current hydrocarbon production is from three basins2 - the onshore Cooper/Eromanga Basin (domestic gas and oil), Gippsland Basin in Bass Strait (domestic oil and gas) and the Carnarvon Basin on the North West Shelf (domestic oil and gas, export LNG). Future production will be increasingly dominated by the North West Shelf, where the bulk of the identified, but as yet undeveloped, resources are located. Recent discoveries of

gas in the offshore Otway Basin (Thylacine, Geographe) and oil in the offshore Perth Basin (Cliff Head) indicate that these basins may also contribute more production in the future.

Figure 2. Australian petroleum provinces and supersystems . Australia currently enjoys a high degree of self-sufficiency for liquid petroleum, estimated at 89% in 20013. The bulk of current production is made up from a number of small to medium sized fields as the base provided by the giant Gippsland fields declines (Figure 3). Production is now at its peak but is predicted to fall sharply in the next few years, even when factoring in production from as yet undiscovered fields and an increasing contribution from condensate (50% of liquids production by 2005) associated with giant gas accumulations3. This scenario could change if the rate of development of the identified, but as yet non-commercial, resources of gas-condensate increases substantially.

Figure 3. Production profiles of individual Australian fields and cumulative production forecasts at 50 per cent probability derived from industry data. BI denotes Barrow Island field in the Carnarvon Basin; GF denotes giant Gippsland Basin fields3.

Finding and developing substantial new sources of oil is the other way the decline in liquids production could be alleviated. While there remains considerable potential to find petroleum accumulations on the North West Shelf, the best chance for finding multi-hundred million barrel oil fields lies in the frontier basins along Australia's southern and eastern margins - in the Great Australian Bight, along the Tasmanian margin and on the Lord Howe Rise. Australia's Deepwater Frontier Basins Bight Basin The Bight Basin, located in the Great Australian Bight, provides a dramatic example of a deepwater frontier of similar size to the Gulf of Mexico, but where only a dozen exploration wells have be drilled. The first deepwater well to drill the major Late Cretaceous delta complex is planned for early 2003. The Mesozoic Bight Basin formed as a result of Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous rifting and the eventual Late Cretaceous break-up between Australia and Antarctica 4,5. Half grabens containing Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous lacustrine rocks are overlain by seaward thickening marine and deltaic sequences. The Ceduna Sub-basin is the major depocentre of the Bight Basin and contains up to 15,000 metres of Jurassic to Cainozoic sediments (Figure 1). There are two major prograding delta sequences - an Albian-Cenomanian delta of equivalent areal extent and similar depositional style to the Niger Delta; and a Late Santonian to Maastrichtian, sand rich delta, up to 5,000 metres thick6. Associated with the deltaic sediments are mobile marine shales7 of Albian and Turonian age that are potential source rocks8. There are a wide range of play types in varying water depths (<200 metres to >2000 metres) and numerous stratigraphic and large structural traps with the potential to contain multi-hundred million barrel accumulations. Eight exploration wells have been drilled in the Great Australian Bight and only one of these was located in the Ceduna Sub-basin, at its the landward edge (Figure 1). Despite the lack of wells, recent studies have provided mounting evidence for the presence of liquid hydrocarbons in the basin. Hydrocarbon indicators include: The presence of minor oil and/or gas indications in most wells of the region, including significant oil and gas shows in Greenly-19 and a palaeo-oil zone in Jerboa-110. Geochemical evidence for a correlation between Cretaceous marine source rocks of the Ceduna Sub-basin, asphaltites recovered from Australias southern shorelines, and the oil shales of the onshore Toolebuc Formation11. Abundant seismic indicators suggesting the presence of hydrocarbons. Liquid hydrocarbon seepage as indicated by SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and ALF (Airborne Laser Fluorosensor surveys)12. Tasmanian Region To the east of the Great Australian Bight are another series of frontier basins - the offshore Otway and Sorell, and the basins of the South Tasman Rise (Figure 1). Gas has been produced since 1986 from small onshore fields in the Otway Basin, but recent offshore discoveries have been orders of magnitude greater (from several hundred bcf to up to one tcf in place). There are advanced plans for piping these resources into the major gas market of south-eastern Australia. As a consequence there has been a re-evaluation of the potential of this part of the margin for gas and oil. Along the west Tasmanian margin, the strike-slip character of the Australia/Antarctica separation has been a dominant influence on basin development. Seismic records show a string of sub-basins trending northwest-southeast between the west Tasmanian coast and the ocean-continent boundary at over 4000 metres water depth. To the south of the island of Tasmania, is the South Tasman Rise, a continental block of similar size (200,000 square kilometres) lying in water depths of 500 to 4000 metres and made up of basement highs and deep basins with several kilometres of sediment, such as the Ninene Basin. To the east of Tasmania is another submerged continental block - the East Tasman Plateau (Figure 4). It lies between 2500 and 3000 metres water depth, and has depocentres with up to 4 seconds two-way time (TWT) of sediments13.

Figure 4. Maps of the Tasmanian region from ODP Leg 189 and other information: Top left - present day bathymetry. Top right - Early Late Cretaceous situation in Gondwana, showing the Tasmania-Antarctic Shear Zone. Bottom left - Middle Eocene situation as Australia moved away from Antarctica, showing the sea transgressing across the Tasmanian land bridge. Bottom right - Eocene-Oligocene boundary situation, showing the deepwater gap to the south and further transgression onto the former land bridge13. From seismic data supplemented by sparse well control, including the recent ODP Leg 189 drilling, the sedimentary section in the offshore Tasmanian region is composed of a

siliciclastic Cretaceous-Eocene sequence that can be thousands of metres thick, overlain by marine siltstones and carbonate oozes, generally less than 500 metres thick13.The total sedimentary section can be up to 6000 metres thick. The Cretaceous to Eocene siliciclastics were deposited in a range of non-marine to shallow marine environments as Tasmania rifted from the surrounding parts of Gondwana and the Australo-Antarctic Gulf formed (Figure 4). Prograding packages indicating deltaic sedimentation, with the possibility of reservoir quality sands, have been observed on seismic records. Live oil shows and a Late Cretaceous oil-prone terrestrial organic-rich potential source rock 14 have been intersected in Cape Sorell-1 . The semi-enclosed, relatively warm and poorly ventilated Australo-Antarctic Gulf has the potential to also provide excellent environments for the deposition of marine source rocks during the Early Cainozoic and perhaps back into the Cretaceous. Apart from the live oil in Cape Sorell-1, other evidence of hydrocarbons from the offshore Tasmanian region include BSRs indicative of gas hydrates, seismic flat spots, and wet gas in seabed cores suggesting the presence of thermogenic hydrocarbons derived from 13 deep source rocks . Australia finally separated from Antarctica by the earliest Oligocene and the marine 15 environment became cooler , deeper and better ventilated as recorded in the change from dark siltstones to light pelagic carbonates in the ODP Leg 189 drilling (Figure 4). These Late Eocene to Early Oligocene marine mudstones may act as a regional seal to Late Cretaceous to Palaeogene turbidite sands. Trap types include flower structures produced in the transpressional regime of the strike-slip margin, where shearing continued until the earliest Miocene (23 Ma) on the western block of the South Tasman Rise16. Lord Howe Rise The Lord Howe Rise is a submerged continental fragment located in the Tasman Sea between Australia, New Caledonia and New Zealand (Figure 1). It is a huge feature being around 740,000 square kilometres in area, and lying in water depths between 750 to 3000 metres. It is a complex of basement ridges, volcanic arcs and extensional basins. The geological understanding of the region relies on widely spaced seismic profiles, eleven DSDP and ODP drill holes, seabed cores, outcrop on Lord Howe and Norfolk islands, and analogy with the geology of the surrounding landmasses. There has been some interest in the petroleum potential of the region as a by-product of the global trend to deepwater exploration. This interest has been recently stimulated by reports of diapiric features, BSRs and seismic flat spots 17,18. The area of mapped BSR in the Fairway Basin on the Lord Howe Rise is shown in Figure 1. Basement has not been intersected on the Lord Howe Rise but is believed to be Palaeozoic continental crust associated with the Tasman Fold Belt of eastern Australia. Late Cretaceous volcanics and condensed latest Cretaceous and Cainozoic marine sediments have been recovered, but the major part of the sedimentary section in depocentres up to 4000 metres thick remains unpenetrated. Wedges and fault blocks of latest Jurassic to Cenomanian clastic sediments were deposited in alluvial, fluvial or lacustrine environments in half grabens19. Following a phase of basin inversion these syn-rift sediments are unconformably overlain by a second syn-rift sequence, Cenomanian to Santonian in age, of possible coastal plain and restricted marine facies. Overlying Campanian to Maastrichtian coastal plain to marine facies represent the initial post-rift sequences which are in turn blanketed by Cainozoic pelagic sediments19. The interpreted latest Jurassic to Early Cretaceous syn-rift sequences of the Lord Howe Rise were deposited in the same extensional episode that formed the Bass Strait basins (see Figure 4B) as initial rifting between Australia and Antarctic followed a path to the north of 19 Tasmania . Following Cenomanian inversion, which is also seen in the Bass Strait basins, a second syn-rift sequence was deposited as a prelude to the Campanian break-up and sea floor spreading in the Tasman Sea. This geological history has produced a number of depocentres on the Lord Howe Rise where there is the potential for hydrocarbon accumulation and evidence for active petroleum systems. Evidence includes seismic flat spots, BSRs, SAR anomalies and hydrocarbons in 21, 22 . sea bed cores as variously reported from the Gower, Capel and Fairway basins Preliminary basin history modelling in the Gower Basin (Figure 1) to the west of Lord Howe

Island, has shown that there is sufficient sediment thickness and early high heat flow for oil generation and expulsion to have occurred. If lacustrine organic rich facies are present within the oldest syn-rift sequences, analogous to the proven oil source rocks in the Otway Basin20, the peak of oil generation is modelled to have occurred in the Late Cretaceous, around 90 Ma.

Conclusions
The area of ice-free deepwater prospective sedimentary basins around Australia exceeds that of any other country, but it remains vastly underexplored. In 2 million square kilometres of sedimentary basin beyond 500 metres water depth only 44 exploration wells have been drilled. Most exploration is focused on producing basins in shallow water, but increasingly there are steps towards deepwater targets, especially at the edges of proven provinces such as the North West Shelf (41 of the 44 deepwater wells) and the Gippsland Basin (2 deepwater wells). The remaining deepwater well was Jerboa-1 drilled in the Bight Basin in 1980, and after a hiatus of over twenty years, more deepwater drilling is scheduled in this basin for the first half of 2003. The southern margin of Australia, with multiple lines of evidence of working petroleum systems and thick untested sedimentary basins, has great potential to become a new, world class petroleum province. Geological endowment, combined with the advances in deepwater technologies, a stable political regime and a competitive fiscal environment makes Australia a compelling destination for exploration investment.

Acknowledgments
Trevor Powell, Andrew Barrett and Neville Exon are thanked for editing the text, Dave Rowland, Phil Symonds and Ian Deighton for providing valuable information and Angie Jaensch for drafting the figures. The authors publish with the permission of the CEO of Geoscience Australia. References 1. Bradshaw, M.T., Foster, C.B., Fellows, M.E., and Rowland, D.C., 1999, The Australian Search for Petroleum: Patterns of Discovery, APPEA Journal, 39 (1),12-29. 2. Longley, I.M., Bradshaw, M.T. & Hebberger, J., 2002, Australian Petroleum Provinces of the 21st Century. In; Downey, M. Threet. J, and Morgan, W.(eds.), Petroleum Provinces of the 21st Century, AAPG Memoir 74. 3. Powell, T.G., 2001, Understanding Australia's petroleum resources, future production trends and the role of the frontiers, APPEA Journal 41 (1), 273-286. 4. Willcox, J.B. & Stagg, H.M.J., 1990 - Australias southern margin: a product of oblique extension. Tectonophysics, 173, 269-281. 5. Totterdell, J.M., Blevin, J.E., Bradshaw, B.E., Struckmeyer, H.I.M., Colwell, J.B. and Kennard, J.M., 2000, A new sequence framework for the Great Australian Bight: starting with a clean slate. APPEA Journal 40(1), 95-117. 6. Totterdell, J.M., Krassay, A.A. and Struckmeyer, H.I.M., 2002, Late Cretaceous deltas of the Bight Basin, Southern Australia: petroleum systems in a frontier basin. AAPG Annual Meeting 2002 Abstracts 7. Totterdell, J.M., 2001, The role of shale deformation and growth faulting in the Late Cretaceous evolution of the Bight Basin, offshore southern Australia. In: Origin, Processes and Effects of Subsurface Sediment Mobilisation on a Reservoir to Regional Scale. Conference Abstracts, European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Gent, Belgium, 1015 September 2001, 72. 8. Struckmeyer, H.I.M., Totterdell, J.M., Blevin, J.E., Logan, G.A., Boreham, C.J.,Deighton, I., Krassay, A.A. & Bradshaw, M.T., 2001 - Character, maturity and distribution of potential Cretaceous oil source rocks in the Ceduna Sub-basin, Bight Basin, Great Australian Bight. In: Hill, K.C. and Bernecker, T. (eds), Eastern Australasian Basins Symposium. A Refocused Energy Perspective for the Future. Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia, Special Publication, 543-552. 9. Smith & Donaldson, 1995 Smith M. A. and Donaldson, I. F. 1995, The hydrocarbon potential of the Duntroon Basin. The APEA Journal 35, 203291.

10. Ruble, T.E., Logan, G.A., Blevin, J.E., Struckmeyer, H.I.M., Liu, K., Ahmed, M., Eadington, P.J and Quezada, R.A., 2001 - Geochemistry and charge history of a palaeooil column: Jerboa-1, Eyre Sub-basin, Great Australian Bight. In: Hill, K.C. and Bernecker, T. (eds), Eastern Australasian Basins Symposium. A Refocused Energy Perspective for the Future. Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia, Special Publication, 521-530. 11. Boreham, C.J., Krassay, A.A. & Totterdell, J.M., 2001 - Geochemical comparisons between asphaltites on the southern Australian margin and source rock analogues of Early Cretaceous age. In: Hill, K.C. and Bernecker, T. (eds), Eastern Australasian Basins Symposium. A Refocused Energy Perspective for the Future. Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia, Special Publication, 531-542. 12. Struckmeyer, H.I.M., Williams, A.K., Cowley, R., Totterdell, J.M., Lawrence, G. And OBrien, G.W., in press. Evaluation of hydrocarbon seepage in the Great Australian Bight. APPEA Journal 42. 13. Exon, N.F., White, T.S., Malone, M..P., Kennett, J.P. and Hill, P.J., 2001, Petroleum potential of deepwater basins around Tasmania: insights from Ocean Drilling Program Leg 189. In: Hill, K.C. and Bernecker, T. (eds), Eastern Australasian Basins Symposium. A Refocused Energy Perspective for the Future. Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia, Special Publication, 49-60. 14. Boreham, C.J., Blevin, J.E., Duddy, I., Newman, J., Liu, K., Middleton, H., MacPhail, M.K. and Cook, A.C., 2002, Exploration potential for oil generation, migration and accumulation in Cape Sorell-1, Sorell Basin, offshore west Tasmania. The APPEA Journal 42, 35-65. 15. McGowran, B., Archer, M., Bock, P., Darragh, T. A., Godthelp, H., Hageman, S., Hand, S. J., Hill, R., Li, Q., Maxwell, P. A., McNamara, K. J., MacPhail, M., Mildenhall, D., Partridge, A. D., Richardson, J., Shafik, S., Truswell, E.M., and Warne, M., 2000, Australasian palaeobiogeography: the Palaeogene and Neogene record. Memoir of the Association of Australasian Palaeontologists 23, 405-470. 16. Hill et al 1997 Hill, P.J., Meixner, A.J., Moore A.M.G. and Exon, N.F., 1997, Structure and development of the west Tasmania offshore sedimentary basins: results of recent marine and aeromagnetic surveys. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 44, 579-596. 17. Exon, N.F., Dickens, G.R., Auzende, J-M., Lafoy, Y., Symonds, P.A. and Van de Beuque, S., 1998, Gas hydrates and free gas on the Lord Howe Rise, Tasman Sea. PESA Journal 26, 148-158. 18. Auzende, J-M., Dickens, G., Van de Beuque, S., Exon, N.F., Francois, C., Lafoy, Y. and Voutay, O., 2000, Thinned crust in the southwest Pacific may harbour gas hydrate. EOS, transactions, American Geophysical Union, 81, 17. 19. Willcox, J.B., Sayers, J., Stagg, H.M.J. and Van de Beuque, S., 2001, Geological framework of the Lord Howe Rise and adjacent ocean basins. In: Hill, K.C. and Bernecker, T. (eds), Eastern Australasian Basins Symposium. A Refocused Energy Perspective for the Future. Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia, Special Publication, 211-226. 20. Norvick, M.S. & Smith, M.A., 2001 - Mapping the plate tectonic reconstruction of southern and southeastern Australia and implications for petroleum systems. The APPEA Journal 41, 15-35. 21. Blevin, J., 2001 Hydrocarbon prospectivity of Australia's remote frontier areas in offshore east and south-east Tasman Plateau. In: Hill, K.C. and Bernecker, T. (eds), Eastern Australasian Basins Symposium. A Refocused Energy Perspective for the Future. Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia, Special Publication, 25-36. 22. Dickens, G., Exon, N.F., Holdway, D., Lafoy, Y., Auzende, J-M., Dunbar, G. and Summons, R.E., 2001, Quaternary sediment cores form the southern Fairway Basin on the northern Lord Howe Rise (Tasman Sea). Australian Geological Survey record 2001/31, 29 pages, 13 plates and CD. 23. Edwards, D. S., Struckmeyer, H.I.M., Bradshaw, M.T. and Skinner, J.E., 1999, Geochemical characteristics of Australias southern margin petroleum systems. The APPEA Journal, 39 (1), 297 - 321. 24. Stagg, H.M.J., Borrisova, I., Alcock, M. and Moore, A.M.G., 1999, Tectonic provinces of the Lord Howe Rise - Law of the Sea study has implications for frontier hydrocarbons. AGSO Research Newsletter, 31, 31-32. 25. Exon, N.F., Moore, A.M.G. and Hill, P.J., 1997, Geological framework of the South Tasman Rise, south of Tasmania, and its sedimentary basins. Australian Journal Earth Sciences, 44, 561-77.