Reg Sprigg pioneers oil/ gas industry in South Australia from 1950s; his Geosurveys guides Santos northeast start
Geosurveys' Reg Sprigg (bottom left at left, with Rudi Brunnschweiller) and Brunnschweiller (top left, with Heli Wopofner and the SO-KOL aircraft used for aerial maps of South Australia's Cooper-Eromanga Basin) in 1957. Right: First structural map of Cooper-Eromanga Basin by the trio that year.
Image courtesy Santos Ltd
Geologist Reg Sprigg was a founder of South Australia’s oil and gas industry – along with his other famous contributions as explorer, environmentalist and scientist.
During a decade (1944-54) with the South Australian government’s geological survey and mines department, Sprigg reshaped geological history with his Ediacaran fossils find in the northern Flinders Ranges and pushed advances in the department’s mapping techniques.
Despite the prevailing opinion that South Australia’s sedimentary cover was too shallow for an oil discovery, Sprigg was tantalised by finding it in the state after the Rough Range discovery in Western Australia.
Sprigg left the South Australian government mines department in 1954 to form one of Australia’s earliest geological and geophysical consultancy companies: Geosurveys of Australia. it became the first major geological and geophysical consulting/contracting company in Australia, employing almost 130 people over 15 years.
Sprigg worked with Nickel Mines of Australia to investigate nickel occurences in the extreme northeast South Australia and uranium extensively in Northern Territory. He predicted oil and gas in the Innamincka region and senior staff of Geosurveys found major oilfield-type anticlines far into southwest Queensland. Geosurveys' geophysical and geological teams operated throughout most of the major Australian deserts and onto the continental shelves.
By the early 1960s, from his modern base in the new DaCosta Building in Adelaide city’s Grenfell Street, Spring was bringing in international experts as well as poaching staff from the South Australian government geological surveys to for his work around Australia.
Sprigg and Geosurveys staff were centrally involved with SANTOS (South Australia Northern Territory Oil Search) company during its foundation phase (1954-1960). They were the primary geological consultants advising Santos on its initial lease area and critically redirected its exploration to the remote northeast of South Australia, where gas and oil were later discovered from 1963. This was brought about by Sprigg's geological appreciation of long-forgotten surface anticlinal features, coupled with his entrepreneurial flair.
As key consultant and seismic contractor in early Cooper Basin exploration and drilling, Sprigg also was significant in the negotiations that secured United States of America investment via the Delhi International Oil Company. When this American finance also brought in American petroleum expertise, Santos dispensed with the services of Sprigg and Geosurveys by 1960.
This presented Sprgg with a new challenge. The result was a petroleum exploration programme called astounding for its uniqueness and ingenuity conducted by Beach Petroleum NL, founded under Sprigg’s guidance in 1962, with Geosurveys brought under its wing.