Following the allocation in 1992 of Aust $2 million to MESA for petroleum exploration as part of the SA Exploration Initiative, the Department undertook to conduct reconnaisance seismic surveys over selected, poorly known sedimentary basins. As...
Following the allocation in 1992 of Aust $2 million to MESA for petroleum exploration as part of the SA Exploration Initiative, the Department undertook to conduct reconnaisance seismic surveys over selected, poorly known sedimentary basins. As part of this work, the SA portion of the under-explored Officer Basin (100,000 square km) was targeted to try to rekindle petroleum industry interest after a 15-year exploration hiatus, through a comprehensive structural re-map of the northeastern area in which promising Neoproterozoic and Cambrian oil shows had been found by earlier stratigraphic and mineral drilling. A high fold reflection seismic survey of 378 km was recorded and processed, 140 km of existing seismic were reprocessed, and a comprehensive geological interpretation of existing data were completed in 1993. This report is a presentation of the geological data obtained to date, plus interim interpretations thereof. The report addresses the Officer Basin's sequence stratigraphy and basin architecture, perceived reservoir and source rock potential, and the regional implications of conventional plus unconventional hydrocarbon indications. It includes formation tops for all significant wells, plus annotated wireline logs from selected intervals in 18 wells. The location and number of core analysis, source rock, acritarch and XRD samples are also listed against the log plots in 10 metre interval groupings. The acritarch studies form the basis of a biostratigraphic zonation which is incorporated in the correlations used in the report.
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