Reply to comment on ‘Paleokarst on the top of the Maokou Formation: further evidence for domal crustal uplift prior to the Emeishan flood volcanism’ by Bin He, Yi-Gang Xu, Jun-Peng Guan & Yu-Ting Zhong, Lithos 119 1–9, 2010

The Middle Permian Maokou limestone is a major natural gas producing reservoir in the southern Sichuan Basin, China. While matrix porosity is low, bit drops, losses while drilling, blowouts, and extremely high well testing flow rates indicate the presence of a dual permeability system in the form of paleocaves, which were formed by karstification in the late Maokouan Age. A combination of geological, paleogeomorphological and karstic analyses...