f Modeling of Coalification in Soma Coal Basin

The Soma Coal Basin, located in the northeastern part of the Aegean Horst-Graben System, is an extensional basin trending in SW-NE direction (approximately 20 kilometers by 5 kilometers). Turkish Coal Enterprises (TKİ) estimates at least one billion tons of lignite and about half of this reserve is present at depths greater than 600m. There are three distinctive coal seams within the coal-bearing Miocene sequence. But, only stratigraphically the lowermost seam, named as “Lower Coal Seam-KM2” is the target of exploration and exploitation efforts. The KM2 interval is being mined by open-cut coal mining and underground mining in the Northern and Central part of the basin, respectively. An underground mining is also planned in the Southern part of the basin. Therefore, exploratory drillings are being conducted here in order to plan the exploitation.