Word: gulf
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Since the oil-forming sediments and the underlying salt sweep beyond the coastline where domes abound, the oil geologists reasoned that there should be domes under the Gulf, too. They took their instruments to sea and found that the salt domes march, rank upon rank, to the edge of the continental shelf, more than 100 miles from land...
From sun-beaten ports in the Gulf Coast a monstrous, ungainly fleet is putting out to sea on a dramatic mission. It is the "navy" of the offshore oilmen, and never did stranger ships sail on more venturesome voyages. Some of the craft bristle with giant cranes; others grow forests of steel columns as tall as Douglas firs. All of them clank and roar with violent machinery. Alongside conventional ships built for more seemly duty, they look as clumsy as cassowaries splashing in a lake of swans...
Many more such outlandish craft will be built to exploit the fabulous treasure of oil, gas and sulphur that lies under the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Bringing it up and to shore will be hard, risky and expensive, but the oilmen, though strangers to the sea, are the most supremely confident of confident Americans...
...Here We Are!" Back in the Permian (pre-dinosaur) period, 200 million years ago, the south central part of the U.S. and much of the present Gulf of Mexico was covered by a shallow sea, connected with the open ocean by an even shallower strait. The climate must have been hot and dry, and the sea evaporated rapidly, drawing fresh salt water in through the strait. Its brine became saturated and deposited crystalline salt, which eventually formed a bed thousands of feet thick...
These rockbound bubbles of salt, one or two miles across and sometimes taller than the Rocky Mountains, are the famed salt domes of the Gulf Coast. In the eyes of the oilmen, they are lovely things. As the salt pokes through the sediment beds, it bends and breaks them and drags them upward, forming many pockets to trap the oil that has formed from marine organisms buried in the sediments. Best of all, salt domes all but shout, "Here we are!" To an oil geologist using the proper instruments (gravimeters and seismographs), a deeply buried dome stands out like...