Reg Sprigg founds Beach Petroleum (later Beach Energy): starts search in 1960s for oil on/below Adelaide's metro coast
Beach Petroleum, the company founded by Reg Sprigg in the early 1960s, initiated underwater oil exploration in Australia, starting in Gulf St Vincent off Adelaide's metropolitan coastline. Later, as Beach Energy, the company expanded its presence on the western flank of South Australia's Cooper Basin, pioneered as an oil and gas site by Sprigg.
Beach Petroleum Ltd (later Beach Energy) was started in the early 1960s by Reg Sprigg, renowned South Australian oilman, geologist, explorer and conservationist.
Its first well, Grange-1, was drilled at the site that became the Grange Golf Course, near Adelaide metropolitan beaches – hence Beach Petroleum. Sprigg started Beach Petroleum after Santos in 1950 ended using the consulting services of his Geosurveys of Australia that had guided the company to start exploring for oil and gas at the Cooper Basin in South Australia’s northeast.
Geosurveys was incorporated into the new Beach Petroleum that immediately took up oil exploration licences on Adelaide’s St Vincent Gulf and the southeast of South Australia. Sprigg initiated Australia's first offshore petroleum search off Vincent Gulf. Without the financial support of big business, the company did exploration using divers in a rare example of submarine geological mapping. Sprigg himself trained as an underwater professionals. Underwater gravity surveys also were done with the company's oceanographic research vessel Saori. Sprigg also started systematic colour photography using aircraft for exploration in South Australia.
In the late 1960s, Adelaide-based Beach Petroleum moved interstate and then became international, first in New Zealand then in Turkey. Spriggs talk about his ventures into Turkey attracted big audience in Adelaide. As Beach Energy, the company went on to become Australia’s largest onshore oil producer with expansion of the western flank of the Cooper Basin, pioneered by Sprigg. The also led to exploring the Otway Basin of southeast Australia with significant discoveries of commercial gas in 1979.
Sprigg became the director of many companies and spokesman for the petroleum industry. His move in 1959 to generate interest in an “association of oil exploration independents”, through a letter to the Australasian Oil and Gas Journal, led to the Australian Petroleum Exploration Association with Sprigg as first and longest-serving president (1959-1966) and winner of its Lewis G. Weekes inaugural gold medal. Sprigg was a founding member of the Geological Society of Australia.
From setting up Geosurveys in 1954, Sprigg pursued other interests. In the early 1950s, Reg foresaw a growing interest in mineral collecting. Thus, creative. In the early 1950s, Reg foresaw a growing interest in lapidary and mineral collecting and, in 1956, founded The Australian Amateur Mineralogist, a quarterly journal with stories on mineral and fossil collecting. It ran for 20 issues and became a collector's item. Sprigg also set up a mineral sales company (Specimen Mineral Pry Lid), a manufacturing jewellery subsidiary (Naturelle Jeweller) and later, Science Aids Australia Pty Ltd providing goods and services to teaching organisations.
