Magallanes Basin

The Magallanes Basin or Austral Basin is a major sedimentary basin in southern Patagonia. The basin covers a surface of about 170.000–200.000 km² and has a NNW-SSE oriented shape. The basin bounds to the west with the Andes mountains and is separated from the Malvinas Basin to the east by the Río Chico-Dungeness High. The basin evolved from being an extensional back-arc basin in the Mesozoic to being a compressional foreland basin in the Cenozoic. Rocks within it derive from the Jurassic Period and includes the Cerro Toro formation.

Magallanes Basin contain most of Chile's coal reserves dwarfing those found in Arauco Basin or around Valdivia (e.g. Catamutún, Mulpún). Its coals are lignitic to sub-bituminous.