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.

According to the Energy Information Administration, "Gulf of Mexico federal offshore oil production accounts for 17% of total U.S. crude oil production and federal offshore natural gas production in the Gulf accounts for 5% of total U.S. dry production. Over 45% of total U.S. petroleum refining capacity is located along the Gulf coast, as well as 51% of total U.S. natural gas processing plant capacity."

Major fields include Eugene Island block 330 oil field, Atlantis Oil Field, and the Tiber oilfield (discovered 2009). Notable oil platforms include Baldpate, Bullwinkle, Mad Dog, Magnolia, Mars, Petronius, and Thunder Horse. Notable individual wells include Jack 2 and Knotty Head.

As technology has progressed over the years, oil companies have extended drilling and production farther and farther from shore, and into deeper and deeper waters. In 1937 Superior Oil of California and Pure Oil constructed a platform just over a mile from the shore at a depth of 13 feet. A year later, Humble Oil built a mile-long wooden trestle with railway tracks into the sea at McFadden Beach on the Gulf of Mexico, placing a derrick at its end - this was later destroyed by a hurricane. A platform was installed in a hundred feet of water for the first time in 1955; in two hundred feet of water in 1962; and in a thousand feet of water in 1979. "By 1970, the technology existed to drill in 2,000 feet of water and actual exploratory drilling was taking place at 1,400 feet." By 2009, more than 70% of Gulf of Mexico oil production came from wells drilled in depths greater than 1,000 feet (300 m), almost double from the percentage ten years ago.

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