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Impacts and Environmental Risks of Oil Spills on Marine Invertebrates, Algae and Seagrass: A Global Review from an Australian Perspective
Published in S. J. Hawkins, A. J. Evans, A. C. Dale, L. B. Firth, I. P. Smith, Oceanography and Marine Biology, 2018
John K. Keesing, Adam Gartner, Mark Westera, Graham J. Edgar, Joanne Myers, Nick J. Hardman-Mountford, Mark Bailey
Refined oils, diesel and heavy bunker fuel oils are apparently more toxic than crude oil. Anderson et al. (1974) compared the toxicity of a heavy fuel oil (Bunker C), a light fuel oil (No. 2, similar to diesel) and two crude oils to three species of shrimps and mysids—the two fuel oils were more toxic than the crude oils, and the heavy fuel oil was more toxic than the lighter distillate (Anderson et al. 1974). Within Australia, crude oils from different oil fields show a range in density (Neff et al. 2000), so the type and source of oil in an unplanned spill is a very important factor in determining the extent of impact and level of exposure to hydrocarbons. There has been very little work done specifically on the toxicity of natural gas condensates (except see Negri et al. 2015) that are particularly relevant to Australia's North West Shelf, but these are known to show toxicity to coral larvae and to affect coral reproduction.
Engineering uses of some ‘waste’ products: The Australian experience
Published in R. N. Chowdhury, Geomechanics and Water Engineering in Environmental Management, 2017
In recent years, GGBFS cements, ranging from 50–90% replacement of OPC, have been used to improve the durability of concrete in marine and aggressive environments as well as in situations where lower permeability and lower heat of hydration are required. Applications have included the North West Shelf Liquid Natural Gas project in Western Australia, the Sydney Opera House forecourt and sea wall and the Sydney Harbour Tunnel immersed tube sections in New South Wales. The North West Shelf Liquid Natural Gas project has used slag cements ranging from 65/35% to 90/10% GGBFS/OPC. This is the widest-range of blends for any single project. In NSW, blends have been typically 60/40% GGBFS/OPC for projects including the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and Sydney Opera House forecourt. This blend is now commercially available as marine cement. Other applications have included the waste gas flues of the Port Kembla and Whyalla Steelworks coke ovens batteries (Jones, 1990).
Energy Trends
Published in Ferdinand E. Banks, The Political Economy of Natural Gas, 2017
Asia is a part of the world where natural gas markets are expanding, with Japan as the focal point of consumption. The newest projects consist of LNG deliveries from Indonesia and Malaysia to Japan, but Japan will also start receiving Australian gas in the not too distant future. The Japanese have also shown considerable interest in buying gas from Canada and North America. Their Australian links consists of the North West Shelf project which was initiated by Woodside Petroleum, and which is partly owned by Shell and BHP. The latter two firms have a quarter share in the export phase of the project, with a sixth of the shares held by BP, Chevron, and a partnership of Mitsubishi and Matsui. The proposed Canadian project is not as large as the Australian, and may not be realised in the near future. But even so there are still a large number of Japanese firms which hope eventually to import a great deal of Canadian LNG. Similarly, 16 Japanese firms have been discussing the possibility of obtaining 730 Gem of LNG from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, and with New Zealand gas production increasing again, and new fields apparently about to come on stream in the Gulf of Thailand, it is clear that the price of gas to Japan is unlikely to increase. Even with the high rate of growth of gas consumption in the world, reserves are increasing more rapidly; and the increase in the world reserve-consumption ratio can only put further downward pressures on the price of gas. Since the Japanese understand this situation perfectly, they are in no great hurry to sign long term contracts with many potential suppliers, and probably regret some of the contracts they have already signed, and in addition would like to retrieve some of the money they have invested in energy proejcts around the Pacific Rim and elsewhere. For instance, it seems almost certain that if Japanese energy importers actually possessed the perfect foresight we like to claim for economic agents in our textbooks, they would not have invested any money in Australia’s Northwest Shelf.
Phanerozoic history of the Pilbara region: implications for iron mineralisation
Published in Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 2022
C. S. Perring, J. M. A. Hronsky, M. Crowe
Unfortunately, and perhaps surprisingly given its economic significance, no published contemporary synthesis of the Phanerozoic evolution of the West Australian Craton currently exists. The published literature has largely focused on the perspective of landform and regolith analysis in a fairly static and local framework. In addition, this previous work has been segmented between studies of the Yilgarn Craton, driven by implications for gold exploration, and studies of the Pilbara Craton, driven by implications for iron-ore exploration, with very little integration between these two streams although both relate to the same larger cratonic domain (the West Australian Craton). Furthermore, the paleovalleys and modern river systems that drain the Hamersley Province empty into the Northern Carnarvon Basin, part of the gas-rich North West Shelf, and this offshore component is typically the preserve of petroleum geoscientists.
Reconciling the onshore/offshore stratigraphy of the Canning Basin and implications for petroleum prospectivity
Published in Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 2023
C. T. G. Yule, J. Daniell, D. S. Edwards, N. Rollet, E. M. Roberts
A suite of mafic igneous rocks consisting of several units, comprise the North West Shelf MMP. These igneous rocks have age ranges from 336 ± 2 Ma to 163 ± 13 Ma derived from a variety of geochronological techniques (Yule & Spandler, 2022). The aggregation of mafic igneous units were mapped across the onshore Canning, offshore Canning, Browse, Roebuck and Northern Carnarvon basins (Figure 7). The time range of the North West Shelf MMP is 172–5865 ms (TWT) where it is shallowest on the southern Browse Basin and northeast Northern Carnarvon Basin and deepest towards the Argo Abyssal Plain. The maximum thickness of the mafic lava delta system in the Roebuck Basin is ∼3700 ms (TWT) (Figure 5c). This thickness is consistent with other studies including MacNeill et al. (2018) and Rollet, Shi, et al. (2019). The thickest section that has been drilled is ∼500 m in Hannover South 1 and Anhalt 1 in the Roebuck Basin where they have been broadly described as ‘weathered volcanics’ in the well completion reports. Samples of mafic igneous units across the study area confirm that these rocks are either intrusive dolerites or extrusive basalts and mostly consist of plagioclase, pyroxene and magnetite (Yule & Spandler, 2022). Generally, the North West Shelf MMP is flat onshore and near the coastline, and the dip steepens downdip. However, it is anomalously deeper in the Fitzroy Trough (which hosts a ∼3.5 second [TWT] thick and ∼40 km wide intrusion; Figure 5a, c), shallower on the Bedout High, and absent on the Broome Platform. Mafic igneous units are easily identifiable from seismic reflectors that are generally much stronger than the surrounding sedimentary rocks and feature strong signal attenuation below (Figure 3; Yule et al., 2022).