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Australia’s future propensity: government geoscience in the quest for hydrocarbon discoveries

Chris Pigram
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Geoscience Australia

The APPEA Journal 53(3) - https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ12130
Published: 30 June 2013

Abstract

Geoscience Australia and its predecessors, the BMR and AGSO, have provided geoscience information to underpin the search for hydrocarbons in Australia for over 60 years. The BMR was established in 1946 to acquire fundamental data sets to reveal the resource endowment of the continent. It undertook Australia’s first seismic survey and its mapping lead Ampol to the first oil discovery at Rough Range in 1953. The close partnership between government geoscience and industry grew in the 1950s as the Petroleum Search Subsidy was introduced and APPEA was established. By 1972 discoveries had been made in Australia’s ten major hydrocarbon basins. The initial focus was onshore, but shifted to the offshore in the 1970s with BMR’s continental margins program. Today, around 90% of Australia’s conventional oil and gas is in these offshore basins and a new balance is being struck as we both pivot back onshore to focus on coal seam gas, shale gas and tight oil/gas. A major increase in Geoscience Australia’s appropriation funding announced in 2012 will deliver a new prospectus for the nation’s hydrocarbon resources. Components of the new program being developed with industry include whole-of-margin and national prospectivity studies and new data acquisition and geological studies in frontier and other poorly understood areas. Data custodianship underpins the new program continuing the principle that all government geoscience information is captured and made freely available to all stakeholders. This new pre-competitive geoscience program represents a renewed opportunity to continue our partnership as we jointly secure Australia’s future energy resources.

Requests for copies of the written speech, please contact: Jessica Warne, Communications and Media Adviser, Public & Government Affairs Department ExxonMobil Australia Group of Companies. Phone: +61 3 9270 3478 / Email: jessica.h.warne@exxonmobil.com

Dr Pigram trained as a geologist (BSc [Hons], PhD) and has more than 30 years’ experience in a wide range of geological research and mapping. He has been a senior research manager since 1993 and has led Geoscience Australia’s marine and petroleum geoscience, minerals geoscience, and geospatial and Earth monitoring programs.

Dr Pigram has worked in Southeast Asia and the West Pacific, as well as extensively in Australia. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications covering tectonics, petroleum, basin analysis and marine geoscience.

Dr Pigram was part of a working group that developed Australia’s Marine Science and Technology Plan following the development of Australia’s Ocean’s Policy. He served on the Australian Academy of Science’s Committee that prepared a Strategic Plan for the Earth Sciences in Australia in 2003.

He is a member of the Geological Society of Australia, Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia, and Australian Society of Exploration Geophysics.

He is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (2001). In 2004 he participated in the APS Senior Leadership program, Leading Australia’s Future in Asia (LAFIA).