Intracratonic sedimentary province in Australia
The Amadeus Basin is a large (~170,000 km2) intracratonic sedimentary basin in central Australia, lying mostly within the southern Northern Territory, but extending into the state of Western Australia.
Origins
The Amadeus Basin is named after Lake Amadeus which lies within the basin. Local deposition of up to 14 km of marine and non-marine sedimentary rocks took place from the Neoproterozoic to the late Paleozoic.
Along with other nearby sedimentary basins of similar age (Officer Basin, Georgina Basin, Ngalia Basin), the Amadeus Basin is believed to have once been part of the hypothetical Centralian Superbasin.
The basin was locally deformed during the Petermann Orogeny (late Neoproterozoic — Cambrian), and more extensively during the Paleozoic Alice Springs Orogeny, events that fragmented the former Centralian Superbasin.
The basin has been above water for the past 50 million years, as the modern coast of South Australia and Western Australia formed during this time.
Resources
The Amadeus Basin contains the producing Mereenie Oil Field near Kings Canyon and Palm Valley Gas Field near Hermannsburg, which supply most of the energy resources to the Northern Territory.
Most of the gas flows along the Amadeus Gas Pipeline to Darwin, while the oil is pumped to Alice Springs and then transported to Adelaide for refining.[1]
