Gulf Coast of the United States Pensacola, St. Petersburg, Tampa, and increasingly, Sarasota. All are the centers of their respective metropolitan areas and contain large ports. (Baton Rouge is relatively far from the Gulf of Mexico; its port is on the Mississippi River, as is the port of New Orleans.) The Gulf Coast is made of many inlets, bays, and lagoons. The coast is also intersected by numerous rivers, the largest of which is the Mississippi River. Much of the land along the Gulf Coast is, or was, marshland. Ringing the Gulf Coast is the Gulf Coastal Plain which reaches from Southern Texas to the western
Offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico (United States) deep-water discoveries, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement projects that oil production from the Gulf of Mexico will increase to per year by 2013. The state of Louisiana issued its first offshore oil and gas lease in 1936, and the following year the Pure Oil Company discovered the first Louisiana offshore oil field, the Creole Field, from the shore of Cameron Parish, from a platform built on timber pilings in water. Today, there are more than 4,000 production platforms and drilling rigs off the coast of Louisiana. The first offshore well in Texas was drilled in