Moatize Fm

The micaceous sandstone is also medium to coarse-grained and sometimes conglomeratic, with poor to moderate sorting. It features low-angle cross-stratification and occasionally exhibits very fine to fine-grained sandstone with moderate to good sorting, showing critical to subcritical ripple cross-lamination ranging from 0.5 to 2 cm thick.

The medium-grained sand is homogeneous and mostly massive, occasionally displaying very tenuous horizontal lamination. Its shape is often lenticular (sigmoid) with irregular contacts with adjacent facies, showing both convex-up and concave-up shapes.

The very fine to fine sand commonly interbeds with micaceous horizontal lamination and parting lineation. The pelite contains very fine to fine sandstone with wavy or lenticular bedding ranging from 0.3 to 5 cm thick, often with ripple cross-lamination. Occasionally, mud layers mark the foresets. At the top of the sequence, there are layers of fine horizontal lamination, along with massive carbonaceous pelite containing very fine to fine sandstone with lenticular bedding and ripple cross-lamination, as well as coal.

The Moatize Formation in the Moatize-Minjova Basin has six main coal seams, known locally from bottom to top as Sousa Pinto, Chipanga, Bananeiras, Intermedia, Grande Falesia and Andre (Vasconcelos et al., 2014).