History Of Oil Exploration In Australia

History Of Oil Exploration In Australia

Not much is said about Australia’s contribution to global crude oil as a producing nation. You hear about the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia but where does Australia fall into this? Well in terms of oil reserves Australia sits at 29th in comparing quantity of oil production with a share of .7% of the global world production. Just to note, Russia has the highest at 12% share closely followed by Russia and the United States.

When it comes to mining Australian’s may be more familiar with other forms of natural resources such as Iron ore (ranked 3rd), Nickel (ranked 2nd), Coal (1st) and even gold (2nd after China). For the purpose of this article we will be talking about crude oil and petroleum in specific.

The largest contributor to the production of crude oil comes from Western Australia which dates back to the early 1900s when the first oil exploration well was drilled near the Warren River. Following this oil was found in 1919 near the Fitzroy crossing with formal exploration beginning in 1946.

There were further findings in Barrow Island with drilling starting on May 7th 1964 after taking a close look on all types of cost saving measures. During this time Australia saw a number of European oil exploration companies studying Australian land and its potential for commercial gains. Magnetic surveys were being conducted by different oil exploration companies to study the oil availability prior to starting the digging ventures. Australian government had also lifted the ban of oil exploration on its soil as well.

As the Barrow islands in Australia was marked a nuclear testing site between 1952 and 1956, Australian government banned all types of oil explorations in that area. After the ban was lifted in 1963, Wapet field parties were allowed to dig for oil in that area. Wapet also identified that that barrow islands have a vast anticline and later on start their digging in 1964.

As stated earlier, today the majority of petroleum resources in Australia are located offshore in Western Australia with the only other resources currently located in offshore Victoria and also the land based Cooper and Amadeus Basins located in central Australia.

For more information about oil exploration or oil production, we recommend getting in touch with an oil exploration company.

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