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The Campine Basin. Stratigraphy, structural geology, coalification and hydrocarbon potential for the Devonian and Jurassic
| Author | Vital Langenaeker |
| Date | 1998 |
| Classification | 2.03.4.10/06 (BELGIUM - WASTE) |
| Front | 
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From the publication:
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION The study of Devono-Carboniferous deposits has a long tradition in Belgian geology. The splendid outcrops in the area to the south of the Meuse and Sambre rivers have attracted the curiosity of generations of Belgian and foreign geologists. Even subsurface activities under the form of coal mining have been undertaken at least since mediaeval times in these areas. The situation of the Devono-Carboniferous rocks to the north of the Brabant Massif is very different. Less than a century ago, human eyes bad never observed these deposits. The last vertebrates that walked around on these rocks were probably Lower Cretaceous dinosaurs. The first clear ideas about the presence of coal-bearing rocks in the subsurface of Northern Belgium arose in the minds of the Castiau brothers, colliery directors in the north of France. In the late 18th and early 19th century they proposed the hypothesis that two parallel girdles of coal basins existed in Western Europe and the British Isles. The first was the well-known Aachen-Liège-Charleroi zone which extends through the north of France to the South Wales Basin. Pierre Joseph and Guillaume Joseph Castiau believed that a second northern girdle existed from the Roermond area over Louvain, Brussels and Kortrijk. They tried to prove this hypothesis with exploratory drilling at Oudenaarde and Meyleghem in 1807. They never reached the foreseen depths, however, due to several technical problems. A further wild cat well was drilled without success at Ename in 1839-1840. Several geological maps were completed in Belgium, The Netherlands and Great-Britain during the following decades. In 1855, the hypothesis of the Castiau brothers was revitalised by the theory of Godwin Austin, who described the Hercynian of Western Europe as a series of synclinal and anticlinal folds, with the synclines containing coal basins. Coal exploration in the Dutch South-Limburg region started in 1856 from the Kerkrade mining area. This exploratory effort was extended towards the Heerlen area from 1873 onwards (Bless et al., 1990). The activities in the Netherlands were the basis for the Louvain professor Guillaume Lambert to suppose that the Dutch coal basin had to extend into the northeastern part of Belgium. His student Andre Dumont jr. supported this theory and published his findings in 1877. In the same year an exploratory company was established and a permission was asked from the Belgian Government to carry out a drilling in Northern Limburg.
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