Keathley Canyon is an

undersea canyon A submarine canyon is a steep-sided valley cut into the seabed of the continental slope, sometimes extending well onto the continental shelf, having nearly vertical walls, and occasionally having canyon wall heights of up to 5 km, from c ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Exclusive Economic Zone in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

. The canyon is named for the hydrographic survey ship USNS ''Sergeant George D. Keathley'' (T-AGS-35). The Canyon is rich in

oil field A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the presence ...

s. The major oilfields at the Keathley Canyon are

Tiber The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the Riv ...

, Kaskida, Lucius, and Buckskin. Many oil companies, including

Chevron Corporation Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation. The second-largest direct descendant of Standard Oil, and originally known as the Standard Oil Company of California (shortened to Socal or CalSo), it is headquartered in S ...

, BP,

Anadarko Petroleum Anadarko Petroleum Corporation was a company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration. It was organized in Delaware and headquartered in two skyscrapers in The Woodlands, Texas: the Allison Tower and the Hackett Tower, both named after former CEOs of ...

ExxonMobil ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...

Repsol Repsol S.A.
El Nuevo Herald, 2012-05-31Originally an init ...

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard ou ...

Devon Energy Devon Energy Corporation is an energy company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration in the United States. It is organized in Delaware and its corporate operative headquarters are in the 50-story Devon Energy Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Its ...

BHP BHP Group Limited (formerly known as BHP Billiton) is an Australian multinational mining, metals, natural gas petroleum public company that is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was founded ...

, Eni,

Navitas Petroleum Navitas Petroleum is a publicly traded, North America-focused, oil and natural Gas Exploration and production company. Navitas is traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TICKER: NVPT.L) and has offices in Houston, Texas and in Herzliya, Israel. ...

and

Total Total may refer to: Mathematics * Total, the summation of a set of numbers * Total order, a partial order without incomparable pairs * Total relation, which may also mean ** connected relation (a binary relation in which any two elements are comp ...

have leased the rights to drill for oil in this area. In June, 2011, ExxonMobil announced two major oil and gas discoveries in Keathley Canyon blocks 918, 919, and 964 (Hadrian field) southwest of New Orleans, with combined estimated reserves of . The find was "the company’s first deepwater exploration well following a U.S. moratorium" after the

Deepwater Horizon explosion The ''Deepwater Horizon'' drilling rig explosion was an April 20, 2010 explosion and subsequent fire on the ''Deepwater Horizon'' Semi-submersible platform, semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit, which was owned and operated by Tran ...

and

oil spill An oil spill is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially the marine ecosystem, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term is usually given to marine oil spills, where oil is released into th ...

in the Gulf in 2010 and "one of the largest discoveries in the Gulf ... in the last decade." "Exxon holds a 50% working interest in four ... blocks. Units owned by

Petrobras Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., better known by the portmanteau Petrobras (), is a state owned enterprise, state-owned Brazilian multinational corporation in the petroleum industry headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The company's name transla ...

and Eni hold a 25% interest in three of the blocks. Petrobras also owns 50% of one of the blocks."Gelsi, Steve
"Exxon holds on to gains, energy stocks fall back"
''MarketWatch'', June 8, 2011, 4:47 p.m. EDT. Retrieved 2011-06-08.

References

Submarine canyons of the Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Mexico oil fields of the United States {{Ocean-stub