AMB2014a: Australian Maritime Boundaries for Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage

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

Use Cases

• Delineating offshore petroleum exploration blocks based on scheduled area definitions.
• Mapping maritime zones for legal and regulatory compliance based on the Act's defined limits.
• Conducting spatial analysis of Australia's marine jurisdiction for environmental impact assessments.
• Integrating maritime boundaries with other geospatial datasets for regional planning.

Strengths

• Data is published by Geoscience Australia in consultation with other Commonwealth agencies, suggesting authoritative sourcing.
• Coverage includes the whole of Australia's marine jurisdiction, including external territories.
• Technical amendments were made based on user feedback, indicating iterative improvement.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality and structure require manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• In the event of an inconsistency, the legislative limits prevail over the digital data.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia

Collection Method

Developed as a GIS data product, replacing the previous AMBIS 2006 dataset.

Time Range

Currency: May 2014.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-25 17:12:50.202128; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia including all external territories, approximately between 8°S to 70°S and 39°E to III74°E.