Members of the research team carrying out fieldwork in the Maniamba area.CREDIT: Nelson Ernesto Nhamutole
A study1 in the South African Journal of Geology has identified the Maniamba Basin in Mozambique as a potential source of natural gas reserves, with 'good to excellent' total organic carbon content in its rocks. Spanning more than 8,000,000 km², the Maniamba Basin is now identified to be ripe with organic material capable of producing natural gas.
The study, led by a team from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and collaborators from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, used new techniques to decipher the basin’s organic richness.
At the heart of the findings on the basin’s energy potential is kerogen, an organic matter in rocks that, under the right thermal conditions, can transform into natural gas and oil. The study identified a mixed presence of kerogen types, predominantly type III and IV. The study lead, Nelson Nhamutole, from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, says the work demonstrates the Maniamba Basin could be correlated with contemporary basins elsewhere in south-central Africa.
“Maniamba Basin has the basic conditions for generating coalbed methane, but whether to develop gas reservoirs with the potential for commercial exploitation requires in-depth evaluation,” says Zhongsheng Shi, from Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development-Northwest, China.
The team suggests further studies that use a suite of geochemical and geological analyses, are essential to map out the path from potential to production.
