Geological and Bioregional Assessment Program

Project completed 2021

Background

Geoscience Australia collaborated with the CSIRO, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment and the Bureau of Meteorology to undertake the Geological and Bioregional Assessment (GBA) Program from 2017 to 2021. The GBA Program assessed the potential environmental impacts of shale and tight gas development to better inform regulation and management of the onshore gas industry. Geoscience Australia contributed expertise in the key program themes of regional geology, gas resource prospectivity, and hydrogeology and groundwater systems. The geological and environmental knowledge, data and tools produced by the GBA Program will assist governments, industry, land users and the community by informing decision-making and enabling the coordinated management of potential impacts.

The Australian Government selected three onshore areas as the focus of the GBA program:

1. The Cooper GBA region, covering about 130,000 km² in south-west Queensland and north-east South Australia
2. The Isa GBA region, which occupies over 8200 km² of northern Queensland, extending east from the Northern Territory border towards the Gulf of Carpentaria
3. The Beetaloo GBA region, covering an area of 28,000 km² about 500 km south of Darwin in the Northern Territory.

Stages

The GBA Program consisted of three stages:

Stage 1 Rapid regional basin prioritisation: this stage identified the onshore geological basins with the greatest potential to deliver new supplies of shale and tight gas to the East Coast Gas Market within 5 to 10 years.

Stage 2 Geological and environmental baseline assessments: focusing on the Cooper, Isa and Beetaloo GBA regions, this stage compiled and analysed available data and information to form a baseline and identify knowledge gaps to guide collection of additional data. This work included integration of data, knowledge and conceptual models to develop the building blocks for the impact assessment in Stage 3.

Stage 3 Impact assessment: this stage analysed the potential impacts of gas resource development on water and the environment to inform and support Australian Government and state and territory management and compliance activities. This stage of the program focused on the Cooper and Beetaloo GBA regions.

Outcomes

An important outcome of the Stage 3 work was the development of a robust impact assessment method using causal networks to assess regional-scale risks of shale and tight gas development on water and the environment. This method allows for the consistent analysis of risks at each step in a chain of events from gas resource development activities through to protected environmental values. A new online assessment tool known as the GBA Explorer was developed to help visualise and understand the causal networks.

Outputs

Further information about the GBA Program, including access to the program's many reports, datasets and the online GBA Explorer tool is available at: www.bioregionalassessments.gov.au/gba