History of Petroleum Exploration and Development in the Cooper and Eromanga Basins

Abstract

Licenses covering the Cooper and Eromanga Basins were first acquired by Santos in 1954 with the first gas discovery, Gidgealpa-2, being made nine years and ten wells later. The Cooper and Eromanga Basins together now make up Australia's largest onshore petroleum province with approximately 190 gas fields and 115 oil fields currently on production from 820 producing gas wells and more than 400 producing oil wells. These wells feed into approximately 5,600 km of pipelines and flowlines via 15 major satellite facilities. Gas is exported (via pipeline) to Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane (East Coast gas market) and liquids, together with NGL, via pipeline to Port Bonython. Gas has primarily been discovered to date in Permo-Carboniferous glacial, coal measure and lacustrine sediments of the Cooper Basin, whilst oil has primarily been discovered in the Jurassic/Early Cretaceous fluvial sediments of the Eromanga Basin. The petroleum history of the past 60 years consists not just of technical innovation leading to new play discoveries and reversal of long held ideas but also the story of people who were focussed on bringing those innovations into realities. Both exploration and development have responded to several periods of low petroleum prices. Notwithstanding poor prices, exploration and development are driven by the financial inertia of the existing infrastructure. Although the reservoirs of the Cooper and Eromanga Basins could never be considered typically “conventional” the move to exploring for and producing from “unconventional” reservoired hydrocarbons also builds on the back of the existing infrastructure. Future exploration and development will likely move towards the shallower (Late Cretaceous of the Eromanga Basin) and deeper (Warburton Basin) reservoirs as well the unconventional reservoirs of the Cooper Basin.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90217 © 2015 International Conference & Exhibition, Melbourne, Australia, September 13-16, 2015