Offshore discoveries at the beginning and end of 1989 brightened an otherwise uneventful year. Wanaea 1, spudded in 1988 in the Dampier subbasin, flowed oil in February. Cowle 1, in the offshore Carnarvon basin, was testing at year end. Talbot 1 became the only discovery in the Vulcan basin (at the opposite end of Australia's vast North West Shelf) in the closing days of 1989. It was a year of reduced onshore exploration activity (the lowest since 1980), but there was more offshore activity than since 1984 in the Gippsland, Carnarvon, and Bonaparte basins, and the Vulcan subbasin. At year end, 5 offshore wildcats and 1 development well were in progress: 3 in the Carnarvon basin, 2 in the Vulcan subbasin, and 1 in the Otway basin.

Onshore, no finds of significance were recorded in 1989. Although appraisal drilling at Katnook in the Otway basin was successful and 1 wildcat was completed as a gas well, 2 neighboring prospects were found wanting. In the Cooper-Eromanga region, the 15 discoveries were small, and no discoveries were made in the Surat basin, Denison trough, Pedirka basin, or onshore Canning and Carnarvon basins. Geophysical activity was the lowest onshore since 1978, but offshore activity was the highest for the decade.

Average daily production of 472,000 bbl (compared with 519,000 bbl in 1988) of crude oil and condensate amounted to about 80% of Australian refinery capacity. Sixty-six percent of the production came from Gippsland basin fields and 15% from Carnarvon basin, where new fields came on-stream. LNG from the North West Shelf was brought on-stream for the first time. While the number of exploration permits in force throughout the nation did not change significantly, large tracts were relinquished in the Canning basin in Western Australia and over portions of the southern Eromanga, Arrowie, Eucla, Murray, Pedirka, and Pirie-Torrens basins in South Australia. Agreement during 1989 between Australia and Indonesia about sharing of potential production in the eastern Timor Sea off Austral a's North West Shelf is expected to open this area to exploration in the near future.