Amadeus Basin prospectively, page-19

Petroleum seeps are common but often not visible unless they are under water. They don't really have any effect on the water table if it's gas as methane is non-toxic. If it's oily then it's a different story.

I wouldn't say that just because there are seeps, you can frac an area with wanton abandon though. Heavier hydrocarbons often get broken down to methane by microbial action as they slowly work their way to the surface over thousands of years whereas if you frac you're introducing heavies directly into the water table. You also run the risk of turning a clean bore into a contaminated one if you're introducing new leaks into the system through poor cement jobs etc. And even though Australian frac fluid is fully disclosed (no secret mixes of chemicals as hudson123 incorrectly claims) and substantially non-toxic, it's still not something you'd want coming out of your taps from the town bore. So the industry needs to be properly and sensibly regulated. Having said that, blanket bans are moronic and populist and states that enact instead of properly regulating the industry them deserve every blackout they get.

Seeps are a good sign because they prove an active petroleum system and a migration pathway. They don't necessarily mean there is no seal, there could be a perfect seal sitting on top of it which is channelling the seep to where it emerges. What you would do is try to identify the kitchen responsible for the seep and then map its migration pathway to the seep site. Along the route you would try to identify any traps such as closures, fault blocks or stratigraphic traps.

It's difficult though because if your kitchen is several kilometres underground then the seep could be hundreds of kilometres away from it. In this case, we also know full well the Amadeus is an active petroleum system and quite a prolific one. The problem in the Amadeus isn't hydrocarbon generation, it's reservoir.