PETROLEUM POTENTIAL: CONVENTIONAL AND UNCONVENTIONAL
The CABS 3 committee has assembled an exciting technical program for the upcoming symposium in Alice Springs on the 16/17th July.
The sedimentary basins in central Australia have been neglected for decades. Exploration activity has picked up in the last five years after nearly 20 years of stagnation, and total petroleum exploration expenditure in the NT now exceeds mineral exploration by a factor of nearly two to one.
The unconventional oil and gas revolution has led to a renewed focus on the Georgina, Amadeus and Beetaloo basins, to name a few. Extensive organic rich marine shales in these basins are being targeted as tight oil/shale oil and shale gas plays. The first horizontal well in the Georgina Basin was drilled in 2011 and the imminent 2012 drilling program includes horizontal drilling and fracture stimulation.
Renewed exploration for the conventionally trapped oil and gas resources is also underway. In 2011 the Surprise-1 well flowed oil at a sustained rate of 380 barrels per day, the first oil discovery in the Amadeus Basin in 50 years.
In the Officer Basin explorers have acquired extensive seismic surveys in some of the most remote areas of the country, and the first wells to test salt-related targets in this frontier region have been drilled.
All of this and much more will be presented at the CABS 3 Symposium. There are nine papers on the Amadeus Basin and five papers on the rapidly emerging Georgina Basin covering both conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon potential. An additional 14 papers will discuss hydrocarbon potential of the Warburton, Pedirka, Eromanga, Arckaringa, Arrowie, Wiso, Officer and Daly basins. There will be a total of seven papers addressing unconventional oil and gas plays in central Australia.
Keynote Speakers
Professor Martin Kennedy: Geological controls on self sourcing shale reservoirs: from deposition through to diagenesis.
Mr John Heugh: The long road to exploration success in Central Australia.
