Officer Basin – Western Australia

About the Officer Basin

The Officer Basin is one of the world’s last major underexplored onshore frontier basins with the potential for multi-billion-barrel conventional hydrocarbon discoveries. Spanning approximately 310,000 km² across Western Australia and South Australia, the basin forms part of the broader Centralian Superbasin system and shares geological characteristics with prolific Neoproterozoic petroleum provinces in Oman and Eastern Siberia. Despite its enormous scale and prospectivity, the basin remains lightly explored, with limited seismic coverage and fewer than 25 wells drilled, many of which encountered hydrocarbon shows. PetroQuest Australia controls a dominant acreage position covering approximately 80,000 km² (~20 million acres), targeting oil, gas, helium, and hydrogen opportunities.

PetroQuest has mapped 49 prospects and leads across the basin with combined unrisked resource potential exceeding 42 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Key structures including Moby Dick, Orca, and Narwal represent massive faulted anticlines and regional superstructures with seismic and gravity anomalies interpreted as indicators of hydrocarbon charge. Several prospects display AVO anomalies and potential hydrocarbon seepage signatures, while mapped play fairways across the Hussar and Kanpa formations cover approximately 8,000 km² — larger than Stabroek Block offshore Guyana. Total risked potential across PetroQuest’s acreage includes an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil, 23.3 TCF of natural gas, and 959 BCF of helium, positioning the Officer Basin as one of Australia’s most significant frontier exploration opportunities.