Petroleum geoscience and basin analysis

The North West Shelf is Australia’s premier petroleum province, and Western Australia’s onshore basins host some of Australia’s newest oil and gas discoveries. Our staff and students work on research projects focusing on the evolution of these Paleozoic–Cenozoic sedimentary basins and the development of petroleum systems within these basins.

Integrating geological and geophysical data is a key element of both research and teaching in petroleum geoscience at UWA. The latest digital technology is used to analyse and interpret datasets, often working in collaboration with petroleum exploration companies, consultancies and government agencies.

We work on subsurface projects and outcrop analogues in Western Australia and South East Asian regions, such as Malaysia, Sumatra, Sarawak and Thailand.

Using a range of geoscientific data, our researchers seek to interpret changes in environments, climates and tectonic settings through time from analysis of sedimentary rocks ranging from three billion years old to modern day. Modern ocean basins are explored via shipboard work, gathering geophysical data and/or retrieving cored material from the ocean floor.