Mount Salt No. 1 Well: Stratigraphic and Drilling Data from Otway Basin, 1962

May to September 1962 drilling data from the Mount Salt No. 1 Well in the Otway Basin, South Australia. The well was drilled by Reading and Bates (Australia) Pty Ltd for Oil Development No Liability to a depth of 10,044 feet, with a full program of logging, testing, and coring. It recorded traces of crude oil and a gas show, subsidized under the Petroleum Search Subsidy Act 1959-1961.

Use Cases

• Correlating Cretaceous stratigraphic units based on described sediment sequences and formation names like Paaratte and Waarre.
• Analyzing petroleum potential based on recorded shows of crude oil and gas from specific depth intervals.
• Studying drilling and testing outcomes using data from the five attempted drillstem tests and the successful water recovery test.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of photogeology and structure drilling programs for detecting closed structures.

Strengths

• Detailed temporal coverage with specific start (9th May 1962) and completion (21st September 1962) dates.
• Precise total depth of 10,044 feet and specific depth intervals for geological features and tests, such as the gas show from 9830 to 9848 feet.
• Comprehensive operational description including logging, testing, coring, and five drillstem tests.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic and temporal bias inherent to a single exploratory well from 1962.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network via data_gov_au

Collection Method

Drilling and data collection by Reading and Bates (Australia) Pty Ltd for Oil Development No Liability.

Time Range

1962-05-09 to 1962-09-21

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-27 18:09:42.972454; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Otway Basin, approximately twelve miles south-west of Mount Gambier, South Australia