Australian National Hydrocarbon Geochemistry Data Collection for Energy Exploration

Geoscience Australia's Australian National Hydrocarbon Geochemistry Data Collection comprises organic geochemistry, petrology, and stable isotope data for source rocks, crude oils, and natural gases. The data are compiled from industry submissions under legislative requirements, research projects, service company reports, and published literature, focusing on Australian sedimentary basins. A derivative Petroleum Systems Summary database provides statistical evaluations and interpretations of the continent's petroleum prospectivity.

Use Cases

• Basin analysis and petroleum systems evaluation based on raw organic geochemistry and isotopic values.
• Resource assessments and enhanced oil recovery project planning based on compiled analytical results from source rocks and crude oils.
• National mapping projects and subsurface petroleum prospectivity modeling based on the statistical evaluations in the Petroleum Systems Summary database.
• De-risking hydrogen exploration and carbon capture programs based on data relevant to sediment-hosted energy resources.

Strengths

• Described as the only public comprehensive database of its kind at the national scale for Australia.
• Includes data from a wide range of sources, including industry submissions under legislative requirements and research projects.
• Covers multiple material types: source rocks, crude oils, and natural gases from onshore and offshore basins.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic and source bias inherent to the compilation from industry and research reports.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia

Collection Method

Compiled from destructive analytical techniques on samples submitted by industry, research projects, service company reports, well completions reports, government reports, published papers, and theses.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 13:50:09.021450; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Onshore and offshore Australian sedimentary basins.