CANNEL COALS OF THE CANNEL CITY-AMBURGY COAL BED (PIKEVILLE FORMATION, MIDDLE PENNSYLVANIAN); EVIDENCE FOR POSSIBLE FAULT-GENERATED LAKES

The Cannel City coal bed is the uppermost coal in the Pikeville Formation, Breathitt Group on the western margin of the Eastern Kentucky Coal Field. Eastward into the basin, the Cannel City is equivalent to the Amburgy coal bed or zone. The coal is Middle Pennsylvanian (lower Atokan, Duckmantian) in age. Cannel coals in the Cannel City coal bed fed a booming cannel industry in the early 1900s. Although there are few outcrops left of the old mined cannel beds, new road cuts north of Jackson, Kentucky, have cut through a locally thick cannel in the Cannel City coal, which may provide insight into this historically important bed.

In outcrop, where thick, the Cannel City coal is locally a multi-benched coal bed between two channel sandstones. The upper cannel coal bench is 0.9 to 1.1 m thick, and is separated from a thin (20 to 38 cm) lower, normal bituminous coal bench by 0.9 to 1.1 m of gray shale. The upper cannel bench is high in ash yield (33 %, dry basis), and moderate in sulfur content (1.6 %, dry basis). Petrographically, it contains high percentages of liptinite macerals (46.7 %, mmf), moderate inertinite (31.1 %, mmf), and low amounts of vitrinite (22.3 %, mmf). Palynologically, it contains a palynoflora co-dominated by lycopsid tree (56.8 %), and calamite (21.9 %) spores. The lower bench has lower ash yield (11 %, dry basis), and higher sulfur content (1.9 %, dry basis), and is dominated by vitrinite macerals (75.3 %, mmf) and lycopsid tree spores (78 %).

The lower bench is typical of Pikeville Formation coals in the area. The upper cannel bench presumably represents the accumulation of detrital peat in a lake. This thick pod of cannel coal is situated on the downthrown side of a basement fault with significant growth in immediately underlying strata of the Pikeville and Grundy Formations. North of the fault, the coal thins as a single bench, and may locally pinch out. Cannels occur in many Kentucky coal beds, but are most common in the Cannel City-Amburgy zone. Interestingly, the thick, historically mined pod of cannel coal at Cannel City, Kentucky, is situated on the downthrown margin of another fault, 23 km north of the new outcrops. Perhaps, several faults were re-activated during this part of the Middle Pennsylvanian and contributed to the development of spore-rich, detrital peat-filling lakes during Cannel City-Amburgy paleomire development.