Identification of Dinantian as Potential Geothermal Reservoir in the Roer Valley Graben by Gravity and Magnetic Modeling

Exploration for ultra-deep (>4 km depth) geothermal reservoirs in the Netherlands subsurface heavily depends on the full exploitation of existing subsurface data before spending on new data sets will be commissioned. Especially the Carboniferous and Permian formations host proven oil and gas reservoirs and are therefore targets of the ultradeep geothermal exploration. By means of an integrated approach exploiting several geophysical and geological data sets in one modelling environment, we demonstrate that several kilometers of sediments have been deposited and preserved below the Upper Triassic in the Roer Valley Graben. These formations are out-of-reach of the existing seismic data and well data. Our approach that we present in this paper entails: 2D gravity and magnetic modelling constrained by seismic interpretation that in turn has been tied to reprocessed velocity and density well log data and additional information on Moho and intra-crustal discontinuity depth from recent studies done by others.