National projects Australia’s Future Energy Resources

The objective of the Energy Resource Assessment study is to identify the ‘yet to find’ hydrocarbon resource potential in a series of central Australian basins, namely the Pedirka, Simpson, Warburton and western Eromanga basins. These basins were selected due to their underexplored status and their proximity to oil and gas infrastructure in the Cooper Basin.

The ‘yet to find’ workflow is consistent with that used by the oil and gas industry to assess and screen opportunities prior to embarking on new exploration programs within a basin. The work will result in an improved understanding of the region’s prospectivity, a quantitative assessment of its ‘yet to find’ hydrocarbon resource potential, as well as building a framework for future resource assessments of sedimentary basins targeted by the Exploring for the Future and Strategic Basin programs.

Benefits

The Energy Resource Assessment study will contribute to delivering economic benefits for both regional communities in central Australia and Australia overall through developing an improved understanding of the hydrocarbon resources in central Australian basins, namely the Pedirka, Simpson, Warburton, and western Eromanga basins. It will produce spatially enabled quantitative assessments for both conventional and unconventional petroleum resources. 

What are we doing?

Key steps in this study include: 

• a gap analysis to identify geological uncertainties and data deficiencies in the areas of interest
• undertaking supporting basin studies to help address current knowledge and data gaps
• well failure analysis to assess the significance of previous exploration drilling results for conventional hydrocarbons
• mapping and spatially analysing the fairways for major reservoirs-seal intervals within key chronostratigraphic units
• mapping and modelling the hydrocarbon charge history
• developing a new workflow for assessing unconventional petroleum resources based on mapping the potential sweet spots where production is most likely to occur and modelling likely production scenarios
• assessing the ‘yet to find’ prospective conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resources. 

The Energy Resource Assessment study will also enable an improved understanding of potential geological storage sites for hydrogen and carbon dioxide through identifying dry valid traps that have not been charged by hydrocarbons. The time-slice based reservoir and seal fairway maps, together with petroleum systems models for fluid flow history, will provide guidance for the identification of deep-seated aquifers and their geothermal and/or hydrogen production potential.  
 

The National Hydrogen Systems studies aim to support the implementation of the National Hydrogen Strategy through understanding hydrogen storage resources in key locations across Australia and estimating the natural (geological) hydrogen resource.

Practical hydrogen storage options are a key unknown in the establishment of a new hydrogen export industry, with salt storage being the ideal storage option. New remote sensing salt prospecting techniques are being tested in collaboration with other Exploring for the Future projects and states and territories. In the absence of practical salt storage options, depleted gas reservoirs or even mined rock caverns may be required.

This activity builds on Geoscience Australia’s geospatial-economic expertise to help identify prospective hydrogen production regions and zones through expansion and further development of the Hydrogen Economic Fairways Tool (HEFT). The HEFT tool enables decision makers, planners and investors to identify the most optimal regions to establish hydrogen production hubs. The tool considers availability and cost of renewable energy resources (solar, wind, hot sedimentary aquifer geothermal), water, and infrastructure required for clean hydrogen production. It also considers the resources and infrastructure required to make clean hydrogen using fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage. 

Geoscience Australia, in collaboration with CSIRO, is conducting a 4-year project to investigate the potential application of CO2-EOR to unlocking new oil and CO₂ geological storage resources in residual oil zones (ROZ) in Australia.

Residual oil zones are geological reservoirs that contain potentially large, economically producible oil resources and offer opportunities for large-scale geological storage of carbon dioxide but their occurrence and accessible oil resources are not well understood in Australia. These rocks can occur beneath or near an oilfield or in areas with no conventional oil accumulations.

Development of ROZ could be economically beneficial, help to address greenhouse gas emissions, and provide increased energy security through the production of new domestic oil resources. 

Objectives 

The CO₂-Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO₂-EOR) in ROZ activity aims to: 

• Help grow our hydrocarbon and CO2 geological storage resources portfolio by demonstrating the potential for CO₂-EOR production of oil and storage of CO₂ in residual oil zones in Australia. 
• Gain an understanding of the global ROZ production industry and the geological parameters and engineering approaches that define a prospective ROZ target.
• Scope the potential occurrence of ROZ in Australia’s key oil-producing basins.
• Develop a methodology for assessing oil production and CO₂ geological storage potential in ROZ in Australia.
• Test the workflow through case studies in the most promising Exploring for the Future priority basins, through geological and petrophysical analysis, core flooding experiments, and reservoir modelling.
• Identify regions that demonstrate potential for oil production and CO₂ geological storage in ROZ for further investment, research and development. 

To date, we have:

• completed a targeted review of the international ROZ production industry
• completed a scoping study to better understand what parameters are most important in order to develop CO₂-EOR activities 
• developed a workflow to identify and characterise ROZ in Australia, predict reservoir behavior, and assess the viability of oil production and CO₂ storage through CO₂-EOR.

What are we doing?

We are:

• testing and implementing our workflow to identify and characterise residual oil zones in Australia, initially focusing on the central Australian basins
• designing and building a carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS or CCS) multi-criteria decision support tool to support the development of CCUS studies and help attract investment in CCUS in Australia. 

For more information on our other CCS work, please visit the Carbon capture and storage page on the Geoscience Australia website. 
 

The Onshore Basin Inventories study is promoting exploration and investment in selected underexplored or frontier onshore basins by providing inventories of the current state of knowledge within each basin.

Specifically, 6 onshore basin inventory reports will be delivered that contain whole-of-basin summaries of the current state of knowledge regarding the petroleum geology, petroleum systems, hydrocarbon prospectivity, exploration history and status, data availability and quality, critical risks and exploration issues as they pertain to both conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons. They provide a single point of reference and build on previous basin inventories, thereby creating a standardised national inventory of onshore sedimentary basins.

The onshore basin inventory reports identify critical science questions and key exploration uncertainties that may help inform future work program planning and aid in decision making for both government and industry organisations. These reports will be supported by selected value-add products that aim to address identified data gaps and evolve regional understanding of basin evolution and prospectivity. 

Petroleum system modelling is being undertaken in selected basins to highlight the oil and gas potential in underexplored provinces, and seismic reprocessing and regional geochemical studies are underway to increase the impact of existing datasets. The inventories are supported by the ongoing development of the nationwide source rock and fluids atlas, accessed through the Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future Data Discovery Portal, which continues to improve the veracity of petroleum system modelling in Australian onshore basins.
 

• Tenthorey, E., and Kalinowski, A. 2022. Screening Australia’s Basins for CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery. Proceedings of the 16th Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies Conference (GHGT-16) 23-24 Oct 2022.
• Bernecker, T., Bradshaw, B., Iwanec, J., Kalinowski, A., Rollet, N., Tenthorey, E. 2022. The ‘Australia’s Future Energy Resources’ project: Investigating the energy resources potential in central Australia. Annual Geoscience Exploration Seminar (AGES) Proceedings, Alice Springs, Northern Territory 5-6 April 2022
• Bernecker T., Bradshaw B.E., Feitz A.J., Kalinowski A.A. 2022. Evaluating Australia’s energy commodity resources potential for a net-zero emission future. The APPEA Journal, 62, S555-S561
• Bradshaw B.E., Rollet N., Iwanec J., Bernecker T. 2022. A regional chronostratigraphic framework for play-based resource assessments in the Eromanga Basin. The APPEA Journal 62, S392-S399
• Feitz, A., Wang, L., Rees, S., Carr, L. 2022. Feasibility of underground hydrogen storage in a salt cavern in the offshore Polda Basin. Geoscience Australia, Canberra
• Hannaford, C., Mantle, D. 2022. Palynological analysis of infill samples for selected wells in the South Australian section of the Pedirka Basin. Geoscience Australia, Canberra
• Hannaford, C., Mantle, D. 2022. Palynological analysis of infill samples for selected wells in the Northern Territory section of the Pedirka Basin. Geoscience Australia, Canberra
• Paterson, R., Feitz, A., Wang, L., Rees, S., Keetley, J. 2022. A preliminary 3D model of the Boree Salt in the Adavale Basin, Queensland. Geoscience Australia, Canberra
• Kalinowski A., Tenthorey E., Seyyedi M., Clennell M.B. 2022. The search for new oil and CO2 storage resources: residual oil zones in Australia. The APPEA Journal 62, 281-293
• Tenthorey, E., Kalinowski, A., Seyyedi, M., Jackson, S., Clennell, B. 2022. CO2 EOR-storage methodology in residual oil zones. Record 2022/003 Geoscience Australia, Canberra
• Wang, C., Walsh, S.D.C., Haynes, M., Weng, Z., Feitz, A., Summerfield, D., Lutalo, I. 2022. From Australian iron ore to green steel: the opportunity for technology-driven decarbonisation. Geoscience Australia, Canberra
• Pedirka Basin South Australia 2021 Reprocessed Seismic Data Package
• Boreham, C.J., Edwards, D.S., Czado, K., Rollet, N., Wang, L., Van der Wielen, S.,Champion, D.,Blewett, R., Feitz, A., Henson,P.A. Hydrogen in Australian natural gas: occurrences, sources and resources. The APPEA Journal. 2021. 61, 163
• Tenthorey, E., Taggart, I., Kalinowski, A., McKenna, J. CO2-EOR+ in Australia: achieving low-emissions oil and unlocking residual oil resources. The APPEA Journal 2021. 61, 118-131
• Walsh, S.D.C., Easton, L., Moloney, J., Feitz, A. Evaluating the economic fairways for hydrogen production in Australia. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. 2021. Volume 46, Issue 73, pages 35985-35996
• 2021. Known Thick Underground Halite Deposits - Version 1 (2021). Geoscience Australia, Canberra 
• Bradshaw, B.E., Khider, K., MacFarlane, S., Rollet, N., Carr, L., Henson, P. 2020. Tectonostratigraphic Evolution of the Centralian Superbasin (Australia) Revealed Through Three-Dimensional Well Correlations. Exploring for the Future: Extended abstract, Geoscience Australia, Canberra, 1–4.