Offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico (United States) Offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico (United States) Offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico is a major source of oil and natural gas in the United States. The western and central Gulf of Mexico, which includes offshore Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, is one of the major petroleum-producing areas of the United States. Oil production from US federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico reached an all-time annual high of 1.65 million barrels per day in 2017. Oil production is expected to continue the upward trend in 2018 and 2019, based on ten new
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