Exploration successes in Australia in 1984 were scored in the established hydrocarbon provinces: onshore, in the Eromanga-Cooper basins in South Australia and Queensland, and in the Surat basin and Denison trough in Queensland; offshore, in the Gippsland basin and along Australia's Northwest Shelf, in the Barrow and Dampier subbasins, and farther north, in the Vulcan subgraben. An encouraging feature of the Eromanga basin discoveries has been the progressive geographic spread of Mesozoic oil discoveries. These began in 1981 with Jackson in southwest Queensland, and were followed by Tintaburra in 1983 and Bodalla South 1 and Moothandella 2 in 1984. In the South Australian portion of the basin, a similar geographic spread has been manifested, from the discoveries along the appacoongie-Murteree trend in the south to the Charo 1 discovery in the north of the basin along the Birdsville Track ridge. There has been a stratigraphic spread also: in both South Australia and Queensland, oil is being found increasingly in Cretaceous reservoirs as well as in basal Jurassic reservoirs. Springton 1 was a Permian multizone gas discovery at the north end of the Denison trough.

Further finds in intra-Latrobe sands were made in the Gippsland basin, notably Manta 1, near the 1983 Basker discovery. In the Dampier subbasin, a new-field discovery, Talisman 1, flowed 4,020 BOPD from an 11.5-m zone in the Barrow Group. Follow-up drilling at Jabiru in the Vulcan subgraben has been disappointing: 3 extension tests and 2 wildcats were plugged before the Challis 1 discovery.

Canning basin exploration was essentially onshore in 1984 and yielded disappointments as well as some tantalizing encouragement. Pictor 1, on the Broome ridge, yielded the most promising flow of gas and oil yet achieved from low-productivity Ordovician carbonates.

Results in the offshore Bonaparte, Arafura, and Carpentaria basins were discouraging, as were the widely spaced wildcats in the Drummond and Moreton basins in Queensland and the New South Wales portion of the Surat basin. Several onshore tests in the Carnarvon basin in Western Australia were unsuccessful. Very little drilling was attempted in South Australia beyond the confines of the Eromanga basin. Two tests each in the Otway and Bass basins of South Australia, Victoria, and Tasmania were unsuccessful.