Australian Maritime Boundaries 2014a: Offshore Petroleum Act Zones

Australia's marine jurisdiction, including waters adjacent to the mainland, offshore islands, and External Territories, is represented in this geospatial dataset. Geoscience Australia developed the data in consultation with other Commonwealth agencies, providing a digital representation of scheduled and offshore areas defined under the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006. The data has a currency date of May 2014 and covers a geographical extent from approximately 8°S to 70°S latitude and 39°E to 174°E longitude.

Use Cases

• Delineating legal maritime zones for resource exploration based on the scheduled areas defined in the Act.
• Mapping Australia's marine jurisdiction for policy and regulatory compliance based on the described maritime limits.
• Integrating maritime boundary data with other geospatial layers for environmental or economic planning based on the coverage of external territories and offshore islands.

Strengths

• Data is published by the authoritative national agency, Geoscience Australia, in consultation with other relevant Commonwealth departments.
• The dataset includes technical amendments based on user feedback, such as harmonization in block SC51.
• Coverage is explicitly defined as the whole Australian marine jurisdiction, spanning a specific latitudinal and longitudinal range.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last updated 2026-04-30 13:31:16.097173; freshness should be verified for current applications.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Developed as part of the primary role in delineating Australia's domestic and international maritime limits and boundaries.

Time Range

Currency: May 2014.

Freshness

Currency date is May 2014; platform record was last updated in April 2026.

Geography

Australian marine jurisdiction, including mainland, offshore islands, and External Territories, approximately 8°S to 70°S and 39°E to 174°E.