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) Gulf Coast Florida, has never been a petroleum-producing area. From the 1950s to the 1990s, oil companies drilled exploratory wells off the Gulf Coast of Florida. Nineteen wells were drilled in state waters, and forty were drilled in federal waters. Gulf Oil drilled the first offshore Florida oil exploration wells in 1947, in state waters in Florida Bay south of Cape Sable, Monroe County. In 1956 Humble Oil drilled an exploratory well in state waters of Pensacola Bay, Santa Rosa County. In 1959 Gulf Oil drilled the first offshore Florida well drilled from an offshore platform, off the Florida Keys.