Lower Cretaceous Aptian Loeme Evaporites of the West African Margin, Republic of Congo: A Key to Successful Exploration for Economic Potash Deposits
摘要
Potash is a potassium-rich salt mainly mined by conventional or solution mining methods, formed from evaporated sea beds millions of years ago. Potash plays a major role in helping to feed the world's ever-growing population as an ingredient in producing fertilizers to improve yield in agriculture. Almost 95% of world potash production has been used as fertilizer to boost crop yield, whereas the rest goes in a variety of chemical products. The Green Revolution, the dramatic increases in food production worldwide, mainly in the eastern world, for instance, Asia, was made possible by using mineral fertilizers to improve seeds and inputs. In the Republic of Congo, Central West Africa, potassium-rich salts are hosted in the Lower Cretaceous (Aptian) Loeme Formation (Evaporites), one of the thick sequences of formations deposited over the block-faulted Precambrian basement, within what is referred to as the equatorial West African “Aptian Basin.” Sedimentation in this basin extended from Namibia to Cameroon, attaining a thickness of over 5 km at depo-centers (Séranne and Anka Séranne and Anka Journal of African Earth Sciences 43:283–300, 2005). The basin is approximately 1700 km long, “restricted” at its southern end by a topographic feature at the approximate position of the “Walvis Ridge” postulated as being due to a mantle hot-spot and transform fault-related high (Montaron and Tapponier Montaron, B., Tapponier, P.: A Quantitative Model for Salt Deposition in Actively Spreading Basins. In: 'Search and Discovery' Article # 30117, Posted June 30 (2010)). The Aptian Basin is divided into sub-basins along both margins of the Atlantic. The sub-basins are thought to have been partially separated by “highs” (Edwards, A., Bignell, R..: Hydrocarbon potential of W. African salt basin: Oil and Gas Journal, Vol. 86, No. 50. (1988)) at the time of deposition, giving rise to some stratigraphic variation. From the exploration perspective, the current study is aiming at presenting potash seams occurrences at different stratigraphic levels in the Aptian Basin in the Republic of Congo and simultaneously demonstrate an exploration approach in the search and discrimination of different quality and economic potash seams for sustainable mining in order to secure foods for the global growing population. To achieve the above objectives, a review of existing accurate historical data from the Congo Salt Basin will be presented, as well as observations made on some holes drilled around the Nkola area in the Kouilou region. Also, a showcase of boreholes imageries for potash seams (sylvinite and carnallitite) detection versus halite layers will be presented where downhole surveys such as gamma ray, gravity, density, and acoustic televiewer have been beneficial as part of the exploration methods in the discrimination of the evaporites above.