The fourth Central Australian Basins Symposium, CABS IV, will be held at the Darwin Convention Centre on the 29th and 30th August this year.
The program will include a pre-conference weekend top end basins tour, oral and poster presentations on both days, a core workshop on the second day of the conference and a post conference shale sedimentology one day short course. The social program includes sundowner drinks at Wharf One on the Darwin Waterfront, and a conference dinner at Pee Wee’s at the Point.
The overlying theme of the conference “Exploring Australia’s Resource Frontier,” reflects the emergence of Australia’s central Australian basins as a 21st century key resource centres. The basins contain significant untapped hydrocarbon and mineral resources and exciting potential in new energy sources and emerging technologies such as hydrogen, helium and CCUS (carbon capture utilisation storage).
CABS IV will provide the geoscience community a forum to share knowledge across many disciplines and discuss the latest ideas and technological developments thus helping to accelerate resource commercialisation.
Field Trip – Top End Basins Tour (August 27-28)
A pre-conference field trip will be held on the weekend before the conference. This field trip will travel through the ‘top end’ of the Northern Territory exploring outcrops and mining history. The trip travel through time from the cretaceous money shoal basin in Darwin to the paleoproterozoic greater McArthur Basin in Katherine.
Poster and Oral Presentations Program (August 29-30)
The CABS IV Technical Papers Committee is currently compiling an outstanding oral presentations and posters program that will focus on topics pertinent to Central Australian Basins including regional geology and tectonics, petroleum geology, organic geochemistry, resource exploration and management, and new frontiers in the 21st century.
Core Workshop (August 30)
At the Core workshop, held at the NTGS Core facility at Winnellie, attendees will interactively examine Roper Group sediments, including the gas -rich organic shales of the Velkerri Formation , with experts from industry and academia . The experts include Professor Howard Johnson, Shell Professor of Petroleum Geology at Imperial College London, Dr Amber Jarrett, Geologist at the Northern Territory Geological Survey (NTGS), Tim Munson, Senior Geologist at the NTGS, Dr Claudio Delle Piane, CSIRO Geosciences Team Lead, and Dr Vincent Crombez, CSIRO Research Scientist in Sedimentology and Stratigraphic Modelling.
Short Course (August 31)
Dr Juergen Schieber, Professor of Geology at Indiana University and a shale specialist, will present a post-conference shale sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy short course on Wednesday 31 August. Dr Schieber has published extensively on shale sedimentology , and is a member of the team currently exploring the geology of Gale Crater on Mars with NASA’s Curiosity rover.
More Information
More information is available on the conference website https://agentur.eventsair.com/cabsiv, or contact via email cabsiv@agentur.com.au.
The article is a summary of a longer article by Sandy Menpes that is to appear is PESA News. For more information on CABS IV please see Sandy’s article.
I encourage you to participate in CABS IV, network with colleagues, and update your geoscientific understanding of the latest developments and ongoing research in the fascinating basins of central Australia.
Registrations are open so booking early is recommended. See you in Darwin in August!
Rhodri Johns, Chair CABS IV, Darwin 2022
