Australian Maritime Boundaries Under Offshore Petroleum Act

Geoscience Australia's Australian Maritime Boundaries 2020 dataset provides a digital representation of scheduled and offshore areas defined under the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006. It covers the entire Australian marine jurisdiction, including external territories, with coordinates in the GDA94 datum. The data was updated in 2020 to reflect the 2018 Timor Sea Treaty and published by Geoscience Australia in consultation with other Commonwealth agencies.

Use Cases

• Analyze the spatial extent of offshore petroleum permits using the scheduled and offshore area polygons.
• Map maritime jurisdictional boundaries for legal and regulatory compliance checks.
• Integrate maritime zone data with other geospatial layers for marine spatial planning.
• Verify the updated Bayu-Undan Offshore Area boundary following the 2018 Timor Sea Treaty.

Strengths

• Updated to reflect the 2018 Timor Sea Treaty, providing current legal boundaries.
• Covers a large geographical extent from 8°S to 70°S latitude and 39°E to 174°E longitude.
• Developed by the national geoscience authority in consultation with multiple government departments.

Limitations

• Specific row and column counts, data volume, and sample data are unavailable for assessment.
• The dataset includes a legal disclaimer that legislation prevails over the digital data in case of inconsistency.
• The temporal coverage is defined only by a currency date of August 2019, not a continuous time series.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, developed in consultation with the Attorney-General's Department, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Australian Hydrographic Office.

Collection Method

Primary delineation of maritime limits and boundaries by the national geoscience authority.

Time Range

Currency date August 2019.

Freshness

Data currency is August 2019, with a version update published in 2020.

Geography

Australian marine jurisdiction including mainland, offshore islands, and External Territories.