The Taoudeni Basin is a major Sedimentary basin in West Africa, named after the Taoudenni village in northern Mali. It covers large parts of the West African craton in Mauritania and Mali. It is of considerable interest due to its possible reserves of oil. In addition to its economic importance, the basin contains scientifically important fossils from the Late Mesoproterozoic and Early Neoproterozoic eras, which correspond to a time interval known as the Boring Billion.
Description The Taoudeni is the largest sedimentary basin in Northwest Africa, formed during the Middle to Late Proterozoic. It continued to subside until the Middle Paleozoic, when Hercynian deformation and uplift occurred. It contains up to of Late Precambrian and Paleozoic sediments. Exploratory drilling since the 1980s has found indications of petroleum in the Late Precambrian, Silurian and Late Devonian formations.
Sediments are thicker in the western half of the basin.
Biogeochemists at the Australian National University found pigments in 1.1 billion year old marine shale from the Taoudeni Basin in Mauritania. They interpret this as fossil chlorophyll from cyanobacteria, and hypothesize that the bacteria were rapidly buried and protected from oxygen. The fossilized chlorophyll was discovered in shale samples from a mining operation. Found: The First Color Made By a Living Thing, Atlas Obscura, July 2018. Accessed 7/21/2025 1.1-billion-year-old porphyrins establish a marine ecosystem dominated by bacterial primary producers. July 9, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1803866115
Petroleum geology
The government of Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world, is eager to create an oil industry. Companies that have been exploring in the area include Baraka Petroleum, Sonatrach, Eni, Total S.A., Woodside and CNPC. However, the remote location and harsh environment of the Sahara Desert make extraction expensive. Baraka Petroleum is bankrupt and the website does not exist any more. The exploration assets are now (2012) in the hands of Eni Group, Woodsite and Sonatrach.
Natural hydrogen In 1987 in the village of Bourakébougou in the Koulikoro Region of Mali, natural hydrogen gas was discovered seeping out of a well. A local petroleum company, Petroma Inc., was created in 2006. Working with international partners, it began producing electricity from the hydrogen in 2012. Since then, the well has produced enough hydrogen to provide electricity for the whole village. The company, renamed Hydroma in 2019, has been exploring the possibilities of exporting the natural hydrogen to Germany.
References
External links Taoudeni Basin on ICONS atlas (2008; published by School of Geosciences, Sydney University, Australia)