Triassic Strike-Slip Across the Northwest Shelf of Australia

Summary Supra-regional tectonic context provides crucial insight in the development of petroleum systems on a smaller scale of observation. We propose that the direction of strike-slip across the NWS and related local to regional movement in the Triassic is a consequence of transpression in an intra-continental stress field that is accommodated over deep seated basement faults and a relatively consistent pattern of Gondwana breaking apart since the Permian. Both pre- and post-Triassic tectonics (e.g. subsidence, inversion) individually shaped the main basins of the NWS due to their respective position in the supra-regional stress field, however, strike-slip provides the unifying tectonic patter across basin boundaries.