The Pinnacles (Gulf of Mexico) The Pinnacles (Gulf of Mexico) The Pinnacles is a rocky prominence on the Continental Shelf approximately 300 feet deep and located about 70 miles off the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama which contains a wide-ranging reef formation. The Pinnacles reefs consist of a lush fauna of hard, soft and, black corals, fixed sea lilies and sponges. The reef creates a living habitat for a well-developed and diverse fish culture. Snappers and groupers spawn here. Typical Caribbean reef fishes and Carolinian shelf fishes, along with epipelagic fishes, and a few deep-sea fishes populate the reef. The Pinnacles reefs are currently too
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