By this point, the task of recreating the thermal history of a prospective petroleum exploration province probably seems fraught with uncertainty and complicated mathematics. Not only do we require estimates of such tenuous parameters as the thickness, temperature and thermal properties of the lithosphere, crust and sediments, but we must also interpret often-ambiguous geological evidence for stretching factor, extension rate, age, subsidence and magmatic underplating. Even then, all of these parameters intelligently and carefully chosen only provide a history of heat flow to be superimposed over a background value, which is, itself, often a matter of some conjecture.

With good-quality data, however, most of these complications can be largely overcome. The discussions in Chapter 7 focussed on forward modelling of heat flow history – estimating what the heat flow history of a basin should have been based on its general tectonic age and style. The alternative is to reverse model the thermal history – use physical data from the basin to deduce what the heat flow history must have been. This chapter details the steps for such a procedure.