Excerpt from published article: Many have wondered about the network of canals and slips southwest of Venice, Louisiana, that boaters and fishermen call “the wagon wheel.” The outer canal forms an almost perfect circle. These canals and slips were dredged in the 1950s and 60s as drilling operators explored their way around the edges of a circular salt stock. This pillar-like body of salt is called the Venice Dome. It is not only nearly perfectly circular, but its sides are also nearly perfectly vertical along much of its length. This certainly appeared to be the case to drillers who penetrated the flanks of the dome to depths of about 12,000 feet. A subsurface structure map on the C6 Sand at Venice Field shows the outline of the salt stock. The concentric contours, which are crossed by a network of faults, indicate a structural anticline in the sedimentary layers around the dome. Sand layers which dip upward toward the salt stock are terminated by the faults or the salt creating perfect traps for the accumulation of oil and gas. Unlike some salt domes where the oil is found across the crest of the dome, at Venice the reservoirs are all trapped around the edges of the circular salt stock—hence the circular network of canals.

Venice Dome is a part of a linked tectonic system of faults and salt domes that underlies the Mississippi River delta. The major faults in the tectonic system all extend to the surface. The network of surface fault traces connect the domes and outline the eastern edge of the Terrebonne Trough. The Venice Dome is intersected by one of the major faults that dips northwestward toward the center of the trough.

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BIOGRAPHY: Chris McLindon was employed as an exploration geologist in the oil and gas industry between 1980 and 2020. He received a B.S. in Geology from the Louisiana State University in 1979. Chris has worked for several companies in the New Orleans area including Stone Energy, McMoRan Exploration, and Helis Oil, as well as being self-employed for several years. Chris is currently the manager/member of McLindon Geosciences, LLC in Mandeville, LA. He is a past- president of the New Orleans Geological Society and a member of the Geological Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, and the Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists. Chris was named to an oversight position for the Louisiana Coastal Geohazards Atlas Project by Dr. Charles Groat of the Louisiana Geological Survey in 2018. In that same year, he was the recipient of the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies Statesmanship Award in recognition of work associated with the atlas project.