The objectives of the study are: to perform resource assessment of the in-place deep (>15,000 ft) natural gas resource of the onshore interior salt basins of the North Central and Northeastern Gulf of Mexico areas through petroleum system identification, characterization and modeling and to use the petroleum system based resource assessment to estimate the volume of the in-place deep gas resource that is potentially recoverable and to identify those areas in the interior salt basins with high potential to recover commercial quantities of the deep gas resource. The principal research effort for Year 1 of the project is data compilation and petroleum system identification. The research focus for the first nine (9) months of Year 1 is on data compilation and for the remainder of the year the emphasis is on petroleum system identification.