Seismic focus off Western Australia
This article is extracted from International Oil Letter, Vol 24 issue 46, published 17 November 2008.
Geoscience Australia began acquiring 619km of 2D seismic over vacant acreage in the Gawler, Officer, Musgrove and Amadeus basins, on 3 November 2008. This government agency advise that between November 2008 and March 2009, it will undertake two major surveys to investigate the Mentelle Basin and the Abrolhos, Houtman and Zeewyck sub-basins of the North Perth Basin and the South Carnarvon Basin. Seismic acquisition in the Mentelle Basin will infill the current 50km grid to provide a dataset with a line spacing of 20 to 30km. The schedule for seismic acquisition, processing and interpretation suggests a 2010 date for release of acreage in the Mentelle Basin.
The deep water Houtman and Zeewyck sub-basins and the North Perth and South Carnarvon basins will be the focus for new acquisition of 2D seismic data and the reprocessing of open-file industry seismic data. Open-file seismic data from the shallow water Abrolhos Sub-basin will be used to constrain the deeper water stratigraphies of the Houtman and Zeewyck sub-basins where petroleum exploration well information is limited. The Wallaby Plateau is a poorly understood fragment of continental crust in the southern parts of the Carnarvon Basin. It has been suggested that a reconnaissance seismic acquisition grid and geological sampling program would provide insights into the location of potential depocentres and, secondly, into whether or not gas-producing stratigraphies of the Exmouth Plateau may extend to the south-west.
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