Australian Maritime Boundaries 2020: Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Zones

Geoscience Australia's Australian Maritime Boundaries 2020 (AMB2020) is a digital geospatial representation of Australia's scheduled and offshore areas defined under the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006. The dataset covers the entire Australian marine jurisdiction, including external territories, with a geographical extent from approximately 8°S to 70°S latitude and 39°E to 174°E longitude. It was updated in August 2019 to incorporate the 2018 Timor Sea Treaty.

Use Cases

• Mapping legal maritime zones for offshore petroleum exploration based on the scheduled areas defined in the Act.
• Analyzing jurisdictional boundaries for greenhouse gas storage projects using the digital representation of offshore areas.
• Visualizing Australia's updated maritime limits, including changes from the 2018 Timor Sea Treaty.
• Integrating maritime boundary data with other marine spatial datasets for comprehensive jurisdictional analysis.

Strengths

• Data is produced by Geoscience Australia in consultation with other Commonwealth agencies like the Attorney-General's Department.
• Provides a defined geographical coverage for the entire Australian marine jurisdiction, including external territories.
• Updated to reflect specific international agreements, such as the 2018 Timor Sea Treaty.

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.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Delineation of maritime limits and boundaries by Geoscience Australia, in consultation with other government agencies.

Time Range

Currency: August 2019.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-25 16:15:46.526991; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia including all external territories, approximately between 8°S to 70°S latitude and 39°E to 174°E longitude.