Is the Bowland-Craven Basin able to support a significant geothermal programme? Yes. We show plausible example plays in four areas of Lancashire, here.
1. East of the blue dashed line the Permo-Trias cover has gone, but the Lower Carboniferous along the Pendle Line marking the southeast-dipping Pendle Ramp is certainly deep enough to generate hot water, and the Ramp is a proven migration route to the Clitheroe-Lothersdale trend. The southern Ribblesdale Fold Belt along the Bowland south margin, is viable: Clitheroe-Gisburn offers two passive-roof duplex objectives. The purple dashed seismic profile across RFB is shown next.
2. The western part has substantial Permo-Trias cover remaining: that’s the acreage west of the dashed blue line. In that area we have burial depth to basal Carboniferous, which is the prime sedimentary sequence expelling hot fluids, comfortably exceeding the threshold 1.4 seconds TWT, say 3250-3500 metres, which marks onset of 100 degrees Centigrade and more. That’s high enough to be commercial.
3. Formby has similar structure to Gisburn, a big stack of thrust slices which is highly fractured and offers large potential storage space for hot water.
4. On the central Lancashire High and farther to southwest, the yellow hachured area has top of Lower Carboniferous limestones at between 1000-2000 metres present depth (estimate after BGS). Limestone and dolomite units are prime targets for fracture development. Roddlesworth area is interesting.