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The search for new oil and CO2 storage resources: residual oil zones in Australia

Created 19/11/2025

Updated 19/11/2025

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Residual oil zones (ROZs) could present a new, potentially large and commercially viable oil resource for Australia and provide an avenue for geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) through CO2 enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR). These reservoirs, which can contain a moderate amount of residual oil and resemble water-flooded oil fields, can be associated with conventional fields (brownfields) or occur with no associated main pay zone (greenfields). Both types of ROZ are currently produced commercially through CO2-EOR in the Permian Basin, USA, and are of growing interest internationally, but our understanding of the occurrence and economic viability of oil production from ROZs in Australia is limited. We are employing geological and petrophysical methods to identify, map and quantify the potential oil resources of ROZs, initially in central Australian basins. Complementing this, we are conducting a series of CO2 core-flooding experiments combined with reservoir modelling to investigate the techno-economic feasibility of producing oil and storing CO2 in these formations. We aim to establish and test a workflow for characterising and evaluating ROZs in Australia. ROZs could prove to be good targets for CO2-EOR+, potentially even producing carbon-neutral or carbon-negative oil by using CO2 from anthropogenic sources, such as from blue hydrogen production. Citation: Kalinowski Aleksandra, Tenthorey Eric, Seyyedi Mojtaba, Clennell Michael Ben (2022) The search for new oil and CO2 storage resources: residual oil zones in Australia. The APPEA Journal 62, 281-293. https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ21077

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Field Value
Title The search for new oil and CO2 storage resources: residual oil zones in Australia
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/da799a2a-b8b3-4f11-a2ae-dfd72ad63a79
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
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        112.0,
        -44.0
      ],
      [
        154.0,
        -44.0
      ],
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      ],
      [
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      ],
      [
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      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "The search for new oil and CO2 storage resources: residual oil zones in Australia". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/the-search-for-new-oil-and-co2-storage-resources-residual-oil-zones-in-australia1