Salt resources of Thailand

In recent years beds of rock salt, as much as 820 feet thick, have been found in the subsurface of northeastern Thailand in a thick sequence of 'red beds' of the Maha Sarakam formation at the top of the Korat group of Mesozoic age. These salt-bearing rocks are widespread in the subsurface of northeastern Thailand and extend under the Mekong river into Laos to form one of the major salt-bearing regions of the world. The Korat group was deposited during Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous times on floodplains and in shallow estuaries, bays, or partly isolated coastal lakes over a large arid or semiarid region that lay near sea level and sank very slowly under remarkably uniform conditions. Total reserves are estimated at more than 2,700 billion tons of inferred rock salt in seven areas or deposits that include only about 20 percent of the total area of about 40,000 square kilometers probably underlain by salt-bearing rocks.