[TheDude]

Gentler downslope, like Prudhoe Bay did for the US. Doesn't change the general downward trajectory.

If we're declining now we could find another Ghawar tomorrow and it wouldn't bring us back up (due to delay in starting production); might put us on a plateau once it ramped up.

So, not to worry!

[Ludi]

Gentler downslope, like Prudhoe Bay did for the US.

Did the discovery of Prudhoe Bay enable the US to transition to an economy not based on growth, or did it enable the US to continue on the path they were already on?

Seems the US just kept going along as before, using more and more energy. Why would another Ghawar make things different?

[TheDude]

Prudhoe Bay was just part of a worldwide oil glut that drove down the price, eventually driving away any interest in unconventional oil/alternative fuels, never mind transitioning to a steady state economy. US hit its 2nd peak in '86 when Prudhoe began to decline, importing more all the while, eventually building our lower MPG fleet. The absence of that glut will dictate things in the future, for better or worse. I don't know how we'll undergo a global transformation of meme to living wholly within our means; I'd like to imagine a shock profound enough to instill a lasting memory of how far off track we went, but don't hold much hope of that happening, sans...philosopher-kings?

[copious.abundance]

A field five times the size of Ghawar isn't going to show up in basement rock.

Not all of Western Australia is basement rock. From my earlier link to the technical document:

Technical report

I took screenshots of the maps in the technical document put them online.

Dr Powell said the most likely oil rich areas included the Arafura Sea in northern Australia, the remote eastern frontier regions such as the Faust, Capel and Fairway basins of the Lord Howe Rise and the continental shelf area south of Tasmania, the South Tasman Rise.

Here's the offshore map. Some of the ones mentioned are already highlighted. The others are easy to find on the map anyway.

Onshore, they include the lower Paleozoic basins of central Australia such as the Canning, Georgina, Warburton and Darling basins - which have geological similarities to oil-rich basins in North America

These I outlined in red

- and the Gunnedah, Pedirka and Simpson basins.

These I outlined in blue.


Interestingly, the Tasmanian Basin, which I linked in the article above as being prospective, isn't even on this other guy's list.

[copious.abundance]

EDIT: Duplicate post

[TheDude]

Oh yeah, I know W Aus isn't all granite, just that large sections of it are. Looked at the technical doc a bit.

Is Alice Springs in the Pedirka Basin area? I'm still curious about that stripper well/teapot refinery in Mad Max 2.

[copious.abundance]

Hmm, looks like this thread was moved.

At any rate, somebody's already identified some potentially large prospects in one of these basins.

--> Coastal gas and oil prospect identified <--

Coastline close to Mount Gambier near the state border has been described as having potential to be the next major hydrocarbon province in the southern margins of Australia.

Addressing the second day in Melbourne of the inaugural Paydirt 2008 Victoria Resources Conference on Tuesday, Essential Petroleum Resources Ltd’s managing director John Remfry said the Discovery Bay High in the Otway Basin has potential to host two trillion cubic feet of gas resource and up to two billion barrels of oil.

[...]

If anyone wants to check out the company website, here it is:
http://www.essentialpetroleum.com.au/

And here's their PDF on this basin (1.7mb):
--> LINK <--

[alokin]

I cannot talk about geology but here in Australia everything is mining, Universities are full of mining, most of the engineers do mining, so many people working there that I really cannot imagine that if there would be huge finds that they would not have explored it yet.
Sure there will be some findings, hopefully not that much that we draw too much international attention on us.

[copious.abundance]

Hmm, looks like this thread was moved.

At any rate, somebody's already identified some potentially large prospects in one of these basins.

--> Coastal gas and oil prospect identified <--

Coastline close to Mount Gambier near the state border has been described as having potential to be the next major hydrocarbon province in the southern margins of Australia.

Addressing the second day in Melbourne of the inaugural Paydirt 2008 Victoria Resources Conference on Tuesday, Essential Petroleum Resources Ltd’s managing director John Remfry said the Discovery Bay High in the Otway Basin has potential to host two trillion cubic feet of gas resource and up to two billion barrels of oil.

[...]

If anyone wants to check out the company website, here it is:
http://www.essentialpetroleum.com.au/

And here's their PDF on this basin (1.7mb):
--> LINK <--

In one of the wells in this area, looks like they found gas, but no oil:
--> PDF news release <--
Better than nothing I s'pose.

[katkinkate]

I heard an interview with a geologist on the radio a couple of days ago and I thought he said that most of dryland Australia is too old to have significant oil deposits. The continent has been severely eroded over the millions of years it's been dry and been stripped of a lot of the rock that would have acted as caprock over any pre-existing oil deposits. I know most of our onland gas is sourced from coal seams. Of course there's a lot of sub-marine areas that haven't been checked.

[TheDude]

In one of the wells in this area, looks like they found gas, but no oil:
--> PDF news release <--
Better than nothing I s'pose.

Any pigs?

[copious.abundance]

Interesting that this area isn't even one of the ones in the article that opened this thread. Also it's gas, not oil, but still . . .

>>> Sydney Morning Herald <<<

Huge gas reserves off Newcastle coast

NEWCASTLE is set to become the hub for one of Australia's largest offshore gas reserves, following the discovery of a $50 billion resource about 20 kilometres off the coast.

Advent Energy said estimates of the amount of gas in the area had greatly increased.

Gas reserves were estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic feet six years ago, but further analysis of seismic data had increased that figure to 16.3 trillion cubic feet.

Advent executive director David Breeze said if the estimate proved correct it would be a "substantial discovery".

"If we're successful in developing the area, it will rank among the largest discoveries in Australia," Mr Breeze said.

The gas field is known as the offshore Sydney basin and stretches for 200 kilometres, covering 8100 square kilometres from northern Sydney to Newcastle.

[...]

Link has a couple maps.

Here's Advent Energy's write-up of the Sydney Basin:
http://www.adventenergy.com.au/projects ... index.html

[sparky]

.

I would be somewhat careful with any Aussie proclamation of sudden riches ,
plucking the unwary is a national sport ,
Australia is a pretty old land mass ,unsuited for the fast sediment deposits associated with oil formation
the Jurassic passed it by without much erosion ,
it was already an old worn land when the dinosaurs were still to come ,

we have heap of Permian coal but oil has been hard to find
all the oil has been found offshore in Bass straits some thirty years ago
and more recently some oil in the Timor gap in the north
karratha is to the north west and is an offshore gas
the Moomba basin is gas but onshore
the area around Sydney is Cambrian sandstone with very little biota in it

the sediments extend from Woolongong to the south ( the steel city with the best surfing beaches )
to Newcastle , there was plenty of coal but never been any trace of oil .

I guess it's a story to follow , but it didn't exactly shook the world here
and I live in Sydney

The company is a two penny drilling venture , they got listed on the stock exchange recently

http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/comp ... sxCode=MMR

There was a quick spike of interest but the price is suspiciously low

.

[copious.abundance]

^
The main reason why I gave this particular one some credence is because the area has already been drilled with gas shows.

Their stock price is probably low because NG prices have crashed over the past 9 months.

[sparky]

.

Hi oil finder , plenty of oil has been found by small companies , it's pretty much the norm actually
and for sure OZ is a big place , there is bound to be something somewhere .

mineral export is our bread and butter , the geology of the place has been scouted ,looking for anything and everything
there still is potential but mostly offshore ,
a tricky one is that the best prospect is around the great barrier reef , the most magnificent stretch of coral anywhere
That is definitely no go area for political reasons
the state of Western Australia would drill anywhere ,
they are four time bigger than Texas with ten time less people and thrive on mining ,
but the place is even older than the rest of the country , mostly pre-cambrian with some really really old rocks
It's great for Iron ore , they have , literally , mountains of the stuff and plenty of other minerals , up to and including diamonds and a lot of gold
but oil is a bit of a young thing , mostly around two hundred millions years to cook it right

.



.


.

[kiwichick]

read the senate enquiry from the archives???

3rd April
go to page 48

Dr. Buckee " there are virtually no unexplored basins in the world "

[copious.abundance]

It appears there are still plenty of unexplored and under-explored basins in the world, including in Australia. Based on a couple things I've read before, the leases they're about to open up in the Great Australian Bight sound particularly interesting.

>>> LINK <<<

New Offshore Australia Exploration Agreage Up for Grabs
Australian Government
Monday, June 01, 2009

The Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson AM MP, has announced the release of 31 new offshore petroleum exploration areas and two special areas in Commonwealth waters.

Speaking at the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association's New Frontiers conference in Darwin, Minister Ferguson said there is nothing more important to the industry and Australia's future wealth, than keeping the exploration sector strong and building project development opportunities.

Minister Ferguson said, "We must not forget that the long-term outlook for oil and gas is one of enormous demand growth. Investment in exploration and production must continue through the present economic downturn."

The 2009 release areas are located across five basins off the Northern Territory, Western Australian, South Australian and Victorian coastlines. The release also includes two special release areas that are known to contain hydrocarbons. These special areas are located over the Turtle and Barnett discoveries offshore Western Australia and Northern Territory. Six of the 2009 release areas have been selected as Designated Frontier Areas.

[...]

The six Designated Frontier Areas include three large deepwater areas on the northern Exmouth Plateau offshore from Western Australia. The Exmouth Plateau is the deepwater frontier of the Carnarvon Basin, Australia's premier hydrocarbon province containing major gas fields such as Jansz and Scarborough. Three out of six deepwater exploration wells drilled in the area in 2008 resulted in significant gas discoveries.

The other three Designated Frontier Areas are in the central Great Australian Bight off South Australia, which is truly a new frontier with no nearby permits currently held.

[...]

[sparky]

.

Good luck for the operators in the Bight , it is truly a wild cat zone with horrible conditions to match

the rest about northern Australia and the great basin is correct ,
that is where the present production is , it is more working proven fields than discovering a new province

The Bight will be interesting to follow , that's practically virgin territory

.

[copious.abundance]

Looks like there's yet more NG off the northwest coast.

>>> LINK <<<

Basin discovery 'comparable' to NW Shelf
July 12, 2009 - 12:44PM

Karoon Gas Australia Ltd chief Robert Hosking says indications are his company's Browse Basin project is comparable to Woodside Petroleum Ltd's original North West Shelf discovery.

Mr Hosking said it was too early to confirm the full potential of his company's project in the Browse Basin, offshore from Western Australia, but early finds appeared "very bullish".

He said the discovery could match the original North West Shelf discovery by Woodside Petroleum, which went on to become Australia's largest resources project.

"They are comparable," Mr Hosking told ABC TV.

He played down comments from ConocoPhillips chief Jim Mulva, which is Karoon's joint venture partner in the project.

Earlier, Mr Mulva said there was at least 16-20 trillion cubic feet of gas at the site.

"It would be pretty hard to confirm all that with one well," Mr Hosking said.

"It looks really positive but we need more wells," he said.

[...]