Chile is the world's largest producer of copper. It has the world's most productive mine at Chuquicamanta (in the northern region). Northern Chile also has rich, high-grade iron-ore deposits, mainly in the Coquimbo area. Most of the ore is exported, and the rest is used by the local iron and steel industry. Chile has the largest deposits of nitrate, in the Atacama Desert in the north. The mining and exporting of nitrate (used for fertilizers and for the production of high explosives) fluorished during the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries.
Other minerals produced nowadays include: gold, silver, molybdenum, manganese, zinc, lead, baixite, sulfur, and potash. Uranium, cobalt, antimony, and tungsten are also mined.

Oil and natural gas fields, near the eastern outlet of the Strait of Magellan and the northern coast of Tierra del Fuego, produced 1,940,000 tons of oil and 4,358 million cubic meters of gas in 1986. In 1989 Chile's oil fields produced an average of 24,000 barrels per day. Coal production was 1.3 million tons in 1986.