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New Exploration Opportunities on the Southwest Australian Margin: Deep-Water Frontier Mentelle Basin

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

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Acreage Release by the Australian Government in 2010 offers for the first time exploration opportunity in the frontier Mentelle Basin. The Mentelle Basin is a large deep-water basin on the southwest Australian margin located approximately 120 km from Bunbury. The Mentelle Basin consists of a large, very deep water, depocentre in the west (water depths of 2000 to 4000 m), and several depocentres in the east in water depths of 500 to 2000 m. The major depocentres are estimated to contain 6 to 9 km of sediments. Assessment of the petroleum prospectivity of the Mentelle Basin is based on correlations to the adjacent Vlaming Sub-basin. These correlations suggest that the Mentelle Basin depocentres are likely to contain multiple source rock intervals associated with coals and carbonaceous shales, as well as good quality reservoir rocks and intraformational seals. The depocentres are overlain by a Cretaceous to Quaternary post-rift succession which contains regional seals and provides a range of potential stratigraphic traps. Burial depth and thermal maturity calibrated to data from the Vlaming Sub-basin indicate that potential source rocks are thermally mature for oil and gas generation. Petroleum systems modelling suggests that generation and expulsion from these source rocks commenced in the Early Cretaceous. The Mentelle Basin offers a wide range of play types, including faulted anticlines and fault blocks, sub-basalt anticlines and fault blocks, drape and forced fold plays, and a large range of stratigraphic plays and unconformity plays.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title New Exploration Opportunities on the Southwest Australian Margin: Deep-Water Frontier Mentelle Basin
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/cb724d0d-d74f-4188-9efa-7b2ce8856a92
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 22/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        112.0,
        -35.0
      ],
      [
        114.25,
        -35.0
      ],
      [
        114.25,
        -32.5
      ],
      [
        112.0,
        -32.5
      ],
      [
        112.0,
        -35.0
      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "New Exploration Opportunities on the Southwest Australian Margin: Deep-Water Frontier Mentelle Basin". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/new-exploration-opportunities-on-the-southwest-australian-margin-deep-water-frontier-mentelle-b