Triassic Reef Distribution in Northern Exmouth Plateau and Canning Basin

2500 km of multichannel seismic profiles were proposed for acquisition in a 1990 research cruise to map Triassic reef complexes. This Geoscience Australia record details a project to assess the petroleum potential of Late Triassic reefs, suggesting a 50% chance they host 60 million barrels of undiscovered oil on Australia's Northwest Shelf. The work aimed to define reef extent, character, and facies changes using seismic profiling, dredging, and coring.

Use Cases

• Analyze seismic profiling data to map the extent and facies changes within Triassic/Jurassic carbonates.
• Assess petroleum potential by correlating reef character data with estimated undiscovered oil volumes.
• Define geological history using dredging and coring results from the northern Exmouth Plateau and Canning Basin.
• Identify new petroleum exploration plays by evaluating reef complexes as potential traps and lagoonal facies as oil sources.

Strengths

• Project proposed acquisition of 2500 km of multichannel seismic profiles for detailed mapping.
• Includes a quantitative petroleum potential estimate: a 50% chance of reefs hosting 60 million barrels of oil.
• Focuses on a specific, novel geological discovery: the first identified Triassic reef in Australia.

Limitations

• Core data is limited, with the project proposing acquisition of only up to 5 cores.
• Data is primarily contained in legacy HTML and PDF reports, not in structured, machine-readable formats.
• The project plan and proposed 1990 cruise date indicate the underlying data collection may be temporally stale.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Proposed acquisition via a 34-day marine research cruise using seismic profiling, dredging, and coring.

Time Range

Focus on Late Triassic (Rhaetian) geological period; project proposed for 1990.

Freshness

null

Geography

Northern Exmouth Plateau, Wombat Plateau, and offshore Canning Basin on Australia's Northwest Shelf.