Tindouf Basin



The Tindouf Basin is a major sedimentary basin in West Africa, to the south of the little Atlas region, Morocco. It stretches from west to east about 700 km and covers about 100000 km2, mostly in Algeria but with a western extension into Morocco and Western Sahara.

Description
In the Ordovician period (490 Ma to 445 Ma) the area was an embayment sloping down from the West African craton into the Tethys Ocean. It became a closed basin in the Late Carboniferous (320 Ma to 300 Ma). The basin has a steep northern edge against the Anti Atlas and more gently sloping southern edge. The basin is filled with up to 8 km of sediment from the Cambrian and Carboniferous ageas. These marine formations are overlain by a continental Cretaceous and Pliocene Hamada cover.

Petroleum geology
The basin may have potential for oil and/or gas production, but has been largely unexplored.