Gulf of Mexico south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana, according to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. US Gulf of Mexico Protraction areas Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. The U.S. states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida border the Gulf on the north, which are often referred to as
Gulf of Mexico basin Mexico which penetrated the Late-Triassic and Early-Jurassic strata, filling the extensional graben features. The Gulf of Mexico basin red beds are specifically named the Eagle Mills formation, located directly beneath the salt, evaporite and marine sediments deposited during the Jurassic, and often found with the diabase dikes and basalt flows mentioned above. Basement rocks in the northeastern region of the Gulf of Mexico basin are fragments of the African plate which remained behind during the breakup of Pangaea and date back to the late Precambrian through the Cambrian. It is atop these Precambrian plate fragments that the mainly carbonate and