| Abstract: | abstractCoal exploration in Afghanistan has focused exclusively on expanding the boundaries of the known Jurassic coal deposits. The systematic stratigraphic and sedimentologic studies needed to locate and characterize new prospects in other parts of the country have never been conducted. Exploration strategies are based on received wisdom formulated before tectonic theory developed, and do not incorporate current understanding of the geologic and environmental processes responsible for peat formation and burial. This analysis reassesses existing data and limited new field reconnaissance data using modern tectonic and coal geology concepts to provide a new understanding of Afghanistan’s true coal potential. Afghanistan assembled during the Phanerozoic from a minimum of 11 microcontinental fragments, 5 arc systems, 3 accretionary wedges, and 2 rift systems. An unknown number of additional Precambrian terranes with separate tectonic histories are exposed in the cores of the Phanerozoic microcontinents. All of the Phanerozoic microcontinents separated from the disintegrating Gondwanaland. Each transited equatorial latitudes prior to accreting to Asia. From a purely theoretical standpoint, peat could have accumulated on every fragment during its equatorial transit. Mississippian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Oligocene, and Pliocene coals and carbonaceous shales are known. Triassic, Jurassic, and Pliocene deposits have been mined, but only the economically important Jurassic outcrops have been studied to any detail. Graphite-rich Precambrian strata are common from the Mesoarchean to the Neoproterozoic, and a Neoproterozoic bone coal was encountered while drilling for copper near Kabul. Jurassic and potentially Triassic and Carboniferous coals may underlie a significant percentage of the North Afghan Platform. Jurassic coals are extremely gassy and are known hydrocarbon source rocks across most of Central Asia. In Afghanistan, where these coal systems are closer to the surface, they could be coalbed methane reservoir rocks. |
