Cooper Basin

The Cooper Basin is the name of a sedimentary geological basin in Australia.

The Cooper Basin is located mainly in the north-east part of South Australia and extends into south-west Queensland. It is named after the Cooper Creek which is an ephemeral river which runs into Lake Eyre.

The surface of the Cooper Basin is mostly desert, including parts of the Simpson Desert, the Channel Country and Sturt's Stony Desert.

Energy Resources

Oil and natural gas

The Cooper Basin is the location of the most important on-shore petroleum and natural gas deposits in Australia, which were originally discovered in the 1960's (although there are larger oil and gas deposits off-shore). Pipelines transport gas to the major markets of Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney.

The largest producer in the basin is Santos Limited with its main production facility at Moomba, South Australia.

The oil and gas deposits in the Cooper Basin tends to be fairly small and fragmentary. There are many small listed companies exploring for additional deposits in the region. Some of these companies are Cooper, Beach Petroleum Limited, Innamincka, Magellan, and many others.

Geothermal

Within the basin exploration companies have conducted extensive research to discover if the area is appropriate for large-scale production. They have drilled and measured the temperature in many holes, estimating that hot granite rocks at 3.5 km deep are 240°C. The Cooper Basin has been selected for the site of a geothermal project, because these rocks are the hottest in the world at economic drilling depths and away from volcanoes.

See also

• Bowen Basin

References

External links

• Santos corporate website
• Beach Petroleum Limited corporate website
• Innamincka Petroleum corporate website
• South Australian parks website - Innamincka reserve