The five-year initiative involves acquiring geophysical and geological information to identify onshore energy sources, such as petroleum, uranium and geothermal energy, to attract investment in exploration.
At the time, Minister for Industry and Resources Ian Macfarlane said Australia was largely unexplored and the government had made encouraging exploration in frontier zones a high priority to boost energy security and exports.
Torrens said its seismic program would increase understanding of the South Australian heat flow anomaly (SAHFA), having direct relevance to its licence areas.
The work is designed to determine the nature and depth of the insulating sedimentary cover over heat-producing granites in the eastern Gawler Craton and Torrens Hinge Zone.
“The Federal Government has rightly identified the Torrens Project Area as a priority greenfields region for geothermal prospectivity,” chief executive Chris Matthews said yesterday.
“This will in turn enable the company to model the heat flow exploration data that will be collected from its shallow drilling and ultimately help Torrens identify targets for deep geothermal drilling.”
In related news, Torrens has been granted exploration permits near Adelaide and Melbourne as part of Geoscience’s Geothermal for Cities program, which aims to provide information on geothermal resources close to population centres.