The U.S.G.S. has acquired a network of 1,280 km (800 mi) of common-depth-point seismic data connecting eight wildcat wells north of the latitude of Tampa and tied to the Destin dome area in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. Line layout facilitates ties to onshore and offshore wells and to the regional multichannel net of the University of Texas. These lines reveal the structural growth of the salt-related Destin dome and a salt pillow with Jurassic and Early Cretaceous growth 30 km (20 mi) south of the Destin structure. Elsewhere in the West Florida Shelf, numerous low relief anticlines are present above basement highs.

Destin dome is a large, west-northwest trending anticlinal structure off northwest Florida. The dome is more than 80 km (50 mi) long and 30 km (20 mi) wide and has relief of a kilometer (3,000 ft) on Lower Cretaceous rocks. The dome appears to be the result of a salt swell that was uplifted during the Late Cretaceous and early Cenozoic. In 1973, 32 tracts (184,320 acres) constituting the eastern half of this structure were leased for $728,000,000. The highest bid lease (near the crest of the anticline) was purchased for $211,997,600 ($36,805/acre). Leases were not offered on the western half of the dome as it lies within a bombing range administered by the U.S. Department of Defense. Structural crests of Lower

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Cretaceous and Jurassic strata within the bombing range are more than 150 m higher than in the leased area to the east. Nine dry holes have been drilled in the vicinity, seven of them concentrated on a structural high in Upper Cretaceous strata on the eastern flank of the dome.

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