Australian Petroleum Accumulations in the Canning Basin, 1993 Report

Nineteen hydrocarbon accumulations, six of which are commercial, were documented in Western Australia's Canning Basin as of January 1993. The report, sourced from the Australian Ocean Data Network, details the geological formations, production methods, and exploration status of the region. It notes that the small size of the accumulations, typically less than 0.5 million barrels of recoverable oil, precludes large infrastructure projects.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the distribution of commercial vs. non-commercial hydrocarbon accumulations based on the reported count of six commercial discoveries out of nineteen total.
• Studying the relationship between geological structures and oil production based on described reservoirs in Permian to Devonian formations and Famennian reefs.
• Assessing exploration potential in underexplored areas like the offshore Canning and Kidson Sub-basin based on the description of higher-risk, untested plays.
• Modeling hydrocarbon source rocks based on the identified Late Devonian and Carboniferous marine shales in the Fitzroy Trough kitchen area.

Strengths

• Provides a specific snapshot of discoveries and commercial status as of January 1993.
• Includes concrete geological details such as reservoir ages (Permian to Devonian), formation names (Grant Group, Anderson Formation), and production volume thresholds (less than 0.5 million barrels).
• Identifies specific geographic sub-regions within the basin (Lennard Shelf, Fitzroy Trough, Kidson Sub-basin) for targeted analysis.

Limitations

• Data is from a 1993 report; freshness should be verified for current applications.
• Row count and column-level documentation are absent; field semantics must be inferred from the descriptive text.
• The primary file formats are PDF and HTML, which may require extraction for structured analysis.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network via data_gov_au

Collection Method

Likely a compiled geological report.

Time Range

Snapshot as of January 1993.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 16:46:30.606026; however, the underlying report data is from 1993.

Geography

Canning Basin, Western Australia, with mentions of the Lennard Shelf, Fitzroy Trough, and Kidson Sub-basin.