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Cooper Basin Source Rock Geochemistry: Regional Hydrocarbon Prospectivity of the Cooper Basin: Part 2

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

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The Cooper Basin is a Pennsylvanian - Middle Triassic intracratonic basin in northeastern South Australia and southwestern Queensland. In conjunction with the overlying Eromanga Basin, the basin is Australia's largest onshore producer of gas and oil. Exploration activity in the region has recently expanded with explorers pursuing a range of newly identified unconventional hydrocarbon plays. These include extensive tight gas accumulations in the Gidgealpa Group, deep dry coal seam gas associated with the Patchawarra and Toolachee formations, the less extensive shale gas plays in the Roseneath and Murteree shales and mixed lithotype hybrid plays (Goldstein et al., 2012; Menpes et al., 2013; Greenstreet, 2015). The Australian Petroleum Source Rocks Mapping project is a new study to improve our understanding of the petroleum resource potential of Australia's sedimentary basins. The source rocks of the Cooper Basin are the first to be assessed for this project, as a detailed understanding of the petroleum generation potential of these is critical for determining both the conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon prospectivity of the basin. This report reviews the Cooper Basin source rock geochemistry and maturity based on a compilation of updated and quality controlled publically available total organic carbon (TOC), Rock-Eval pyrolysis and vitrinite reflectance data. This is the first study of its kind to be undertaken for the Cooper Basin as a whole and builds on the previous work of Boreham & Hill (1998) in South Australia. The resulting maps and statistics quantifying the spatial distribution, quantity and quality of the Cooper Basin's source rocks provide important insights into the hydrocarbon prospectivity of the basin.

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Field Value
Title Cooper Basin Source Rock Geochemistry: Regional Hydrocarbon Prospectivity of the Cooper Basin: Part 2
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/en/dataset/94990fff-6764-4007-ac5b-b2b95eee1bf3
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 22/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage Australia
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Cooper Basin Source Rock Geochemistry: Regional Hydrocarbon Prospectivity of the Cooper Basin: Part 2". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/cooper-basin-source-rock-geochemistry-regional-hydrocarbon-prospectivity-of-the-cooper-basin-pa