Basin Inventory Carpentaria Basin

The Carpentaria Basin is a Mesozoic basin located in the northernmost part of Australia and is centered around the Gulf of Carpentaria . It forms part of the Great Australian Superbasin that includes the Eromanga, Surat, Nambour and Clarence-Morton basins to the south, the Laura Basin, to the east, and the Papuan Basin to the north. In a west-east direction it extends for about 1250 km from the area of Katherine in the Northern Territory to the Great Dividing Range in Queensland. A small portion of the basin reaches the east coast of Queensland in the Olive River region. In a north-south direction it extends for over 1000 km from Cape York to Cloncurry, in Queensland. The basin has a total area of over 750,000 km2, comparable in size to the state of New South Wales. From a geographic standpoint the sediments of the Carpentaria Basin occur in three areas: offshore below the Gulf of Carpentaria, onshore to the west in the Northern Territory, and onshore to the east in Queensland. This report focuses on the geology and energy resource potential of the onshore areas of the basin but, to provide a broader understanding of the basin evolution there is, of necessity, some discussion of the geology offshore.