Gulf of Mexico BP reached an $18.7bn settlement with the US government, the states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, as well as 400 local authorities. To date BP's cost for the clean-up, environmental and economic damages and penalties has reached $54bn. According to the National Response Center, the oil industry has thousands of minor accidents in the Gulf of Mexico every year. On May 12, 2016, a release of oil from subsea infrastructure on Shell's "Brutus" oil rig released 2,100 barrels of oil. This leak created a visible 2 mile by 13 mile oil slick in the sea about 97 miles
Structural evolution of the Louisiana gulf coast The observation of minibasins (small sedimentary basins) and other features have suggested that the salt in the Gulf of Mexico primarily moves by spreading under differential sedimentary loading, which needs many conditions (e.g. huge amounts of deposited material above the salt) to be met. However, models and observation of the northern Gulf of Mexico favor gliding via slope instability. Controversies such as this example indicate that this area is structurally complicated. During the Mesozoic Era, the supercontinent Pangaea began to rift apart, forming the Gulf of Mexico basin within the late Triassic and early Jurassic periods. The rifting was accompanied