Total organic carbon
BGS Datasets
Key information
Scale:
N/ACoverage:
Great BritainAvailability:
LicensedFormat:
Excel spreadsheet or GIS point data (ESRI, MapInfo, others available by request)Price:
On request. Subject to number of users, licence fee and data preparation fee
Uses:
National-level useTotal organic carbon (TOC) is a measure of the dry weight per cent of organic carbon within hydrocarbon source rocks. Hydrocarbons, including natural gas (principally methane, ethane and propane), may be generated by the heating of organic carbon through burial over geological time.
BGS total organic carbon data map for the UK. BGS © UKRI. Contains OS data © Crown Copyright 2020.
A shale with low concentrations of organic carbon (typically below about two per cent) probably won’t have the capacity to produce oil or gas in useful quantities. It should also be noted that a high TOC value is not necessarily an indicator of shale gas potential. The gas prospectivity of a rock is heavily influenced by the kerogen types within the organic matter, including that derived from plankton, algae, spores, pollen or plant fragments. These can affect gas production, rock porosity and the rates at which gas may be released.
Relative topics
You may also be interested in
Vitrinite reflectance
BGS vitrinite reflectance data derived from borehole analysis. Vitrinite reflectance data tells us the maximum temperature history of a sediment.
Coal Authority geophysical borehole logs
The map shows the location of borehole records containing digital geophysical logs from the former National Coal Board and British Coal.
Coal Authority seismic survey
This data is the original digital data for seismic reflection surveys conducted by the National Coal Board (NCB) and its successor, British Coal Corporation (BCC).
BGS Resistivity
This theme provides information on the electrical resistivity of a geological material, to be used where the earthing characteristics of the ground are required.