The Cooper Basin is a Permian-Triassic sedimentary geological basin in Australia. The basin is located mainly in the southwest part of Queensland and extends into north eastern South Australia. It is named after the Cooper Creek which is an ephemeral river that runs into Lake Eyre. For most of its extent, it is overlain by the Eromanga Basin. It covers 130,000 km².The surface of the Cooper Basin is mostly desert, including parts of the Simpson Desert, the Channel Country and Sturt Stony Desert. Oil and gas exploration of the basin began in 1962.