Title
Tectonic Reactivation And Palaeo-Stresses (TRAPS)
Summary
Petroleum exploration is expensive and risky, particularly in Australia
where structural reactivation and loss of oil and gas is common.
Understanding tectonic reactivation is crucial to avoid dry wells.
Present-day stresses for Australia are well understood, but their evolution
through the geological past is unknown. We propose to create 3-D
geodynamic models constrained by known plate motions to model Australian
intra-plate stresses for the last 70 million years. The models will
serve as a powerful predictive framework for basin formation and evolution,
inversion, fault-reactivation, and thus for successful petroleum exploration
using the Browse and Canning basins/NW Shelf as test cases
Outcomes
• Palaeo-stress maps for Australia for the Tertiary
• Mantle heat flux through time (constrains basin and hydrocarbon maturation
models)
• A geodynamic framework to understand the formation of Tertiary structures
and traps
• A method to distinguish potentially low- and high-integrity fault
traps before drilling
The outcomes will stimulate industry interest in exploration on the Northwest Shelf of Australia, increase the success rates in finding hydrocarbons, and reduce exploration costs and risks in such frontier areas. At present, the oil and gas industry relies on a relatively small collection of key technologies for exploration. This project introduces a powerful new suite of methods which have not been used in the petroleum industry in the past. With electricity generation, transport, manufacturing and residential use relying heavily on gas and oil, the social and economic benefits of this project to Australia could be profound. For example, a 20% rise in production would lead to as much as 0.5% rise in gross domestic product and up to 0.4% increase in employment, $1 billion per annum of resource taxes on oil and gas production and a $1 billion per annum income tax paid by the industry.
Industry sponsors
BHP
Santos
Shell
Woodside
Participants
Dr. R. D. Müller, The University of Sydney
Dr. Louis Moresi, CSIRO, Nedlands and The University of Sydney, Research Associate
Dr. Richard Albert, The University of Sydney, Research Fellow
Dr. Hans Muehlhaus, CSIRO, Nedlands
Prof. Michael Gurnis, California Institute of Technology
Tara Deen, The University of Sydney, PhD student
Jason Zhao, The University of Sydney, PhD student
Nathan Palmer, The University of Sydney, Honours student