qld.gov.au
Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment

The Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment (OGIA) is an independent office primarily responsible for assessing cumulative impacts from resource development in Queensland, including coal seam gas (CSG), conventional oil and gas, and mining; and then developing and supporting proactive strategies for managing those impacts.

OGIA is not a regulator. It is uniquely positioned to bring together the science and resource management. Its work is primarily focused on scientific investigation, modelling and monitoring relating to groundwater impacts, and support of an adaptive management framework for managing the impacts within cumulative management areas (CMAs) in Queensland.

The Department of Local Government, Water and Volunteers provides corporate and administrative support to OGIA. The work undertaken by OGIA is provided to the Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DETSI), which is responsible for regulatory compliance of groundwater management strategies and actions identified by OGIA. This includes statutory obligations on individual tenure holders to proactively ‘make good’ impacts on water supply, undertake mitigation measures for impacts on groundwater-dependent ecosystems and install monitoring networks.

OGIA’s role is also expanding. As of 2025, it now has an added function to provide advice to Queensland Government agencies – when requested – about subsurface impacts from resource development. Additionally, in response to landholders’ concerns about impacts from CSG-induced subsidence on farming lands, OGIA is also tasked with developing tools and techniques for farm-scale assessment of CSG-induced subsidence.

 

News and events

Surat Underground Water Impact Report (UWIR) 2025 consultation draft release

The Surat UWIR is a statutory report to provide for a three yearly iterative assessment of cumulative groundwater impacts from CSG, coal mining and conventional oil and gas development in the Surat Cumulative Management Area (CMA) and review the strategies for managing those impacts.

OGIA has released the consultation draft of the Surat UWIR 2025 to seek submissions from tenure holders, bore owners and the public. The publication of the draft report was also announced on the DLGWV website.

The consultation draft was amended on 10 November 2025 to correct an error without affecting the underlying impact assessment or modelling.

The submission deadline closed on 28 November.

OGIA will consider submissions in finalising the report for approval by DETSI. Following the approval, the UWIR 2025 will take effect and supersede the UWIR from 2021 on implementation of the management strategies.

OGIA is also releasing a non-statutory summary of the assessment, in the form of an Atlas of maps and illustrations for cumulative groundwater impact assessment and management in the Surat Cumulative Management Area from coal seam gas, conventional petroleum and gas and mining development (PDF, 29MB). The atlas is designed for A3 printing. If you would like a hard copy, please email ogia@dlgwv.qld.gov.au.

In addition, several web-based interactive tools are concurrently released by OGA to empower stakeholders with information about the impacts on their bores, status of baseline assessment, bore assessment, make good agreements, monitoring and groundwater extraction, together with contextual information.

For further scientific and technical details on elements of the UWIR, see the publications and reports page.

Interactive tools recently released by OGIA

OGIA develops tools that can be used to find information that may be of interest. The following is a list of tools recently released or improved.

  • Updated Bore search tool – search for information about predicted groundwater impacts at the location of a bore.
  • Water Extraction Explorer – select an area on the map to view the CSG water extraction volumes and compare with the groundwater use from water bores in the same area.
  • Monitoring data viewer – select and view time series data for multiple monitoring points with contextual information.
  • Surat CMA StoryMap – visually navigate and interact with the resource development, geology and impact assessment in the Surat CMA.
  • Airborne electromagnetic (AEM) tool – view AEM survey data over the western Condamine Alluvium between Dalby and Cecil Plains.
  • Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) tool – query land profiles from LiDAR data in the western parts of the Condamine Alluvium.

Review of CSG-induced subsidence

In November 2022, the GasFields Commission Queensland (now Coexistence Queensland) reviewed the regulatory framework for CSG-induced subsidence in response to Dalby and Cecil Plains landholders’ concerns about its impact on their high-value agricultural land. The review found that the current regulatory environment is complex and lacks clear jurisdictional responsibility for regulating CSG-induced subsidence. It identified several issues:

  • existing protections are untested
  • there are knowledge gaps regarding potential impacts
  • protections for farming operations are inconsistent
  • there is no clear pathway for impact assessment or dispute resolution.

The review resulted in 8 recommendations to government, which were all supported or supported in principle. This included a proposal to expand the remit of OGIA to provide advice on subsidence and develop tools to assess the impacts of subsidence on farming operations.

Read more about the Department of Resources response to the GFCQ’s review of CSG-induced subsidence.

Expansion of OGIA’s advisory functions

In June 2024, the Queensland Government amended the Petroleum & Gas (Production and Safety) Act 2004 (P&G Act), enabling OGIA to provide to government agencies or Coexistence Queensland, when requested, advice about matters related to subsurface impacts from relevant authorised activities. The provision draws upon OGIA’s expertise in this area.

Publications recently released by OGIA

For a full list of publications, see the publications and reports page.

Airborne electromagnetic survey data visualisation tool

OGIA has released an interactive web tool that enables users to visualise airborne electromagnetic (AEM) survey data in the western Condamine Alluvium, between Dalby and Cecil Plains. OGIA commissioned SkyTEM Australia to conduct the AEM survey in May 2023, to improve understanding of groundwater connectivity.

Read more about this in OGIA's products and tools.

In March 2025, OGIA met with the Central Downs Irrigators Limited group in Dalby and gave a presentation about interpretation of the survey. A video of the presentation is available online.