The Contribution of Geophysical Surveys to Australia’s Onshore Energy Security Program

Summary

Geoscience Australia (GA) has implemented an Onshore Energy Security Program (OESP) to identify Australia’s onshore energy resources. The objectives of the OESP are to provide essential pre-competitive geoscientific information to both reduce exploration risk and to stimulate investment in exploration for Australia’s uranium, thorium, geothermal and onshore petroleum resources.

The program is funded under a new Energy Security Initiative announced by the Australian Government in August 2006. As a key component of the OESP, GA will be conducting geophysical surveys across Australia for the next four years, collecting the following data: deep seismic reflection and magnetotelluric, airborne radiometric and magnetic, airborne electromagnetic, ground-based gravity and thermal conductivity.

This increase in funding by the Commonwealth, in addition to the States and NT exploration initiatives over the last several years, will continue the recent improvements in the regional geophysical coverage of Australia.

Key words::

• Geophysical surveys
• seismic
• magnetotelluric
• radiometric
• magnetic
• electromagnetic
• gravity
• thermal conductivity