The Queensland Government has announced a targeted Expression of Interest (EOI) process to nominate areas of land for resources exploration and production is now open and will close at 5:00pm AEST on 30 November, 2026.
Through this process interested parties are invited to nominate specific areas of land to be considered for release for exploration, or those that may be considered suitable to go straight to production.
The department is seeking expressions of interest for:
An Introduction to the Perth Basin
The Perth Basin is a large (approximately 174,000 km2), elongate, north to north-northwest trending sedimentary basin that extends roughly 1,300 km along the western margin of the Australian continent, from north of Geraldton to south of Augusta, with both onshore and offshore components (Mory and Iasky, 1996). The basin formed through repeated rifting associated with the break-up of Gondwana, culminating in the separation of Greater India from the Australian margin in the Late Jurassic.
The informally defined northern Perth Basin is the main hydrocarbon-bearing province within the Perth Basin, although non-commercial quantities of oil and gas have been identified in the southern Perth Basin, notably at Whicher Range (gas, onshore) and Gage Roads (oil, offshore).
On August 24, Amplitude Energy announced they had commenced drilling Juliet-1 in Victoria waters, targeting 48.8 Bcf prospective gas resource with an 84% success probability. The well, in joint venture with O.G. Energy, aims to evaluate gas quality and potential development, with results expected in 20-25 days.
Juliet-1 is an exploration well located in permit VIC/L24 within Commonwealth waters, adjacent to the existing Casino, Henry, Netherby (CHN) pipeline.
The Juliet prospect is supported by high Waarre C reservoir amplitudes, and a clear ‘flat spot’ at approximately 2,300m True Vertical Depth Sub-Sea (TVDSS) implying gas-water contact, both of which contribute to a probability of geological success of 84% (as reported by Amplitude Energy).
Omega oil and gas have announced the results of their appraisal well Canyon-3 in the eastern Taroom Trough. Reporting to market on 24 August, Omega advised that results have exceeded expectations and provided strong evidence for a large-scale oil and gas province in the basin.
Highlighted results:
Results from Canyon-3, the first well in Omega’s extensive 2026/27 drilling program, have exceeded expectations and provided strong evidence for a large scale, internationally significant, oil and gas province in the eastern Taroom Trough
Canyon-3 reached a total depth of 3,792.
Elio Lanzilli is a senior petroleum geoscientist with over 25 years of experience across exploration, appraisal and development in numerous Asia–Pacific geological provinces, including the North West Shelf, Bonaparte Basin, Cooper Basin, Indonesia and PNG. With a PhD in sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy, his career began mapping the PNG foreland—an experience that shaped his practical, field‑driven approach to subsurface problem‑solving.
He recently completed his tenure as PNG Exploration Manager at Santos and is now establishing LZRG, a subsurface advisory practice aimed at supporting operators in exploration risk and opportunity.
Reviewing the quarterly updates from operators in the Cooper Basin points to ongoing activity with some exciting results reported.
During the last quarter, Santos reported drilling 21 wells across the Cooper Basin including 17 gas and four oil wells with 14 of them connected for production. They continue their flood recovery works following last year’s unprecedented flood event, despite record local rainfall, with 10 flood-impacted wells returned to production during the quarter. A further 30 development wells are drilled but unconnected, awaiting access to be restored.
JV Partner Beach reports that the wells they participated in included exploration success at the Kwagga and Chinstrap fields, with Kwagga 1 discovering gas in both the primary Toolachee Fm target, and also the secondary Patchawarra Fm, whilst Chinstrap 1 discovered gas in the Callamurra Sst.
Constellation Resources has been granted two Special Prospecting Authorities with Acreage Options (SPA-AOs) covering a combined 18,404 km² of Western Australia’s underexplored Edmund–Collier Basin.
The authorities, SPA 48 AO and SPA 49 AO, will allow Constellation to advance exploration targeting naturally occurring hydrogen, helium and natural gas through on-ground gas surveys and further geological and petrophysical studies.
Despite limited historical petroleum exploration, the Proterozoic Edmund–Collier Basin has produced several indications of subsurface gas. In 1977, AMOCO Minerals’ percussion hole JRP-TP-03 recorded a pressurised gas outburst and surface ignition at approximately 300m sub-surface.
More recent investigations have detected hydrogen, helium and hydrocarbon gases, including methane and ethane, within the basin, providing further evidence of an active subsurface gas system.
New Zealand has awarded its first new offshore petroleum exploration permit since the 2018 ban reversal, granting Australian company EnZed Energy a 12-year permit in the Taranaki Basin to explore the Kaheru prospect, located east of the Kupe gas field.
“This permit marks a major milestone for New Zealand’s energy sector and shows that without doubt, we are open for business,” says Resources Minister Shane Jones.
Gold Hydrogen Limited (ASX: GHY) has successfully completed appraisal flow testing at the Ramsay 1 exploration well in South Australia's Yorke Peninsula. This is the first time in 3 years that Helium has been produced within Australia, and comes at a time of global shortages. Whilst at an early stage, Gold Hydrogen are targeting commercial scale production within 18 months.
The Ramsay Project on Yorke Peninsula is an exploration project covering 75,000km2 in PEL687. In 2023, Gold Hydrogen undertook exploration drilling, targeting two areas where historical oil exploration had reported occurrences of natural hydrogen.
The ancestral evolution of the Euphrates River system—a 3,000-kilometre fluvial network central to the development of early human civilization—has been the subject of geological debate. Competing paradigms have long clashed over its Late Neogene trajectory, variously positioning its terminal sink within endorheic Anatolian palaeo-lakes, the Mediterranean Sea, or across the arid expanses of the Arabian platform.
In the study published in June in Nature Geoscience, the authors, led by Dr Andrew Madof, leverage an extensive multi-disciplinary dataset to resolve this question.