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
Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies for the world’s ninth largest body of water; and establish a cohesive strategy for ensuring the Gulf of Mexico’s ecological and socioeconomic health and productivity. The second State of the Gulf of Mexico Summit held December 4–8, 2011, in Houston, Texas, highlighted the strong need for a platform to develop a shared vision of a healthy Gulf in the aftermath of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill catastrophe. In order to formulate a roadmap for restoring the Gulf, government, NGO and academic experts addressed a broad range of issues including: loss of wetlands, hypoxia, coastal resiliency, ecosystem health, marine