Australian Maritime Boundaries 2020: Offshore Petroleum Act Zones

Geoscience Australia's AMB2020 dataset is a digital representation of Australia's maritime zones as defined under the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006. It covers the Australian marine jurisdiction, including waters adjacent to the mainland, offshore islands, and External Territories, with geographical extents from 8°S to 70°S latitude and 39°E to 174°E longitude. The data was updated in August 2019 to reflect the 2018 Timor Sea Treaty and was published in consultation with other Commonwealth agencies.

Use Cases

• Mapping offshore petroleum exploration zones based on the scheduled areas defined in the Act.
• Analyzing maritime jurisdiction for legal or regulatory compliance based on the defined territorial sea baseline and outer limits.
• Visualizing the impact of treaty changes, such as the 2018 Timor Sea Treaty, on maritime boundaries.
• Conducting spatial analysis for marine spatial planning within Australia's exclusive economic zone.

Strengths

• Data is produced by the authoritative national agency, Geoscience Australia, in consultation with other government departments.
• The dataset has a defined geographical coverage spanning a large area of the Southern Hemisphere.
• It includes updates for specific international treaties, such as the 2018 Timor Sea Treaty.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The description notes that in the event of an inconsistency, the legislative limits prevail over the digital data.
• Row count and specific data volume are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Delineation of maritime limits and boundaries by the national geoscience agency.

Time Range

Currency August 2019.

Freshness

Data currency is August 2019; platform metadata shows a last updated date of 2026-04-30.

Geography

Australian marine jurisdiction, including external territories, approximately 8°S to 70°S and 39°E to 174°E.