Revealing oil migration in the frontier Bight Basin, Australia

Abstract The Bight Basin along the southern margin of Australia represents one of Australia's most prospective deep-water frontier hydrocarbon exploration regions, however its 15 km-thick sedimentary succession remains largely untested. Whilst there is some evidence of oil from shows, fluid inclusions and natural strandings of asphaltite along the basin margin, it is unclear if any hydrocarbons were generated in the deep-water Ceduna Sub-basin. Fluid inclusions offer a unique method to test for petroleum migration that would otherwise remain hidden and a study, using CSIRO's Grains with Oil Inclusion (GOI™) technique, was undertaken on Gnarlyknots-1A along with other historic exploration wells. With the exception of Jerboa-1, in the Eyre Sub-basin, the GOI results (