PESA Gazette

GSWA Record 2025/6

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A Summary of GSWA Stratigraphic drilling in sedimentary basins, Western Australia

The Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) routinely acquires new pre-competitive geoscience data to encourage exploration within Western Australia. Drilling in underexplored regions by this organisation aims to update stratigraphic and age relationships, and the prospectivity for many commodities. In Neoproterozoic–Phanerozoic sedimentary basins such drilling can reveal the existence of reservoir, seal and hydrocarbon source rocks, and can provide geothermal data to aid prospectivity assessments for petroleum (oil, hydrocarbon gas, helium, and hydrogen), coal, geothermal energy and CO2 sequestration.

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PESA Symposium 2025 – Juggling the Energy Mix

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Symposium Chair Melanie Fitzell and the Queensland branch committee delivered another successful one-day symposium on Monday 1st September at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The conference opening address was delivered by the Minister for Natural Resources and Mines, the Honourable Dale Last, who closed his speech with the words: “you drill, I sign”. This was followed by a Keynote address from Darren Moor, Executive Director Georesources from the same department, and a final Keynote from industry stalwart Rick Wilkinson of Energy Quest “Energy plan or just muddling through?”. 

A technical session featuring CCS and geothermal followed morning tea, three top quality presentations from Nikki Accornero (Accornero Advisory), Rachel Kieft (Santos) and Ray Johnson and Heinz-Gerd Holl (Novus).

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Carbon Loop #012

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Hello and welcome to The Carbon Loop — a newsletter by the CCUSNA dedicated to highlighting the Australian carbon capture, utilisation and storage industry

Several heavy-hitting globals are collaborating to investigate the potential for CCUS hubs in Asia and Northern Australia. The consortium brings together BHP (bhp.com), which is leading the study, alongside steel giants ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India (AM/NS India) (amns.in), JSW Steel (jswsteel.in), and Hyundai Steel (hyundai-steel.com), as well as energy and infrastructure players Chevron (chevron.com) and Mitsui & Co. (mitsui.com).

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The Renaissance Tour: A revival of frontier basins with data-driven exploration

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by Karyna Rodriguez, Neil Hodgson & Lauren Found

Presented at the Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia (WA Branch) Lunch Series, June 2025

Full article available here

As the energy exploration landscape evolves, so too does the thinking around the basins being investigated. Advancing seismic acquisition and processing technologies in the last decade have allowed for explorers to take a fresh look on frontier and previously discarded basins, with the shifts in thinking and interpretation yielding billions of barrels of results.

In this world tour, four deep-water basins are investigated, including the Papuan Basin of Papua New Guinea (PNG), the Scotian Basin of Canada, the Namibian-South African Orange Basin and its Brazilian conjugate margin in the Pelotas Basin.

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Background to resolution on Retired members from AGM May 2025

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By Max Williamson

FCA PESA Distinguished Member

For and on behalf of the NSW Branch Executive Team

Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia Ltd

NSW Branch

GPO Box 625 Sydney NSW 2001

(Incorporated in WA) A.B.N 12 009 061 278

PESA GAZETTE - BACKGROUND TO RESOLUTION ON RETIRED MEMBERS

Date: 26 May 2025 5.00pm

Place: AGM PESA - Rydges Hotel Southbank

The Motion:

The Annual renewal fee for members who have retired and are not working in a paid role or paid employment be reduced to the sum of $50 per annum starting from renewals after 31 December 2025.

Business:

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SA/NT Branch Winter Warmer

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Not to be outdone by WA Branch, SA/NT Branch held their Winter Warmer on 7 August at Prohibition Gin Distillery, in Adelaide’s CBD. Over 40 hearty souls braved the cold evening in the distillery’s tin shed to sample 3 different gins (Classic, Blood Orange & Field Blend Shiraz); cleansing ales were available for purchase as well. The proprietor  provided detailed information on each of the gins (and ales) and gave us suggested drinking instructions. Unsurprisingly, most members did not require much of the latter. Pizzas a-plenty were provided to sop up the drink.

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Carbon Loop #011

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Read the full newsletter here

Hello and welcome to The Carbon Loop — a newsletter by the CCUSNA dedicated to highlighting the Australian carbon capture, utilisation and storage industry

CCUSNA Goes East ..

Three of us from the CCUSNA Committee packed our scarves (and light emotional baggage) and headed to Melbourne earlier this month for the Carbon Capture APAC Summit. We appeared on more than one panel (read: two) and did our best to champion the CCUS cause without tipping over into cringe.

Highlight of the event, at least for me, was Brett Woods, CEO of Beach Energy, who used a solid chunk of his time to praise Gorgon — a competing CCS project. He

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Exciting future events coming to WA

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We also have really exciting visitors coming to Perth during the coming months. On Thursday 2nd October Dr Brian Willis will be presenting an evening talk followed by a core workshop at Perth Core Library with Simon Lang and Tobi Payenberg. This trip is supported by Santos Ltd.

On the 6th and 7th November, we are delighted to be hosting Dr Henry Posamentier here in Perth. Henry is running a 2-day course entitled “Seismic Geomorphology and Seismic Stratigraphy: Fundamentals and Workflows”.

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WA June technical Lunch

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The Renaissance Tour: A revival of frontier basins with data-driven exploration.

By Lauren Found, Searcher.

Lauren Found of Searcher Seismic took us on a global magical mystery tour from the offshore Papuan Basin to the Scotia Basin offshore Canada on the northern Atlantic margin and the Orange Basin, offshore Namibia with its conjugate the Pelotas Basin offshore Brazil and showed us new insights from new data and interpretation in these basins that make them look more interesting than previously thought.

Lauren showed a new crustal model for the Gulf of Papua interpreted from long offset 2D seismic data suggesting the presence of new and previously overlooked depocenters and the possibility of the contin­uation of the oil provinces that are prolific in the onshore.

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SA/NT branch talk

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Sharon Tiainen (left) and Paul Strong (right), receive vote of thanks from Rob Kirk (centre) for their stimulating SA/NT branch luncheon talk

“New Geological Studies Leading to 2025 Acreage Release in the Polda and Otway Basins, SA” The July 31 meeting was attended by 35 participants

The Polda Basin is a 10,000 km2 Neoproterozoic to Jurassic basin covering the central western portion of the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia and extends westwards into the Great Australian Bight.

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