*3.2.1 Geological setting*

The salt domes considering interesting as a source producing oils, minerals like Sulfur, Salts, and recently are used as burial locations for waste disposal of nuclear materials. Salt domes are common in the Gulf Coast area of Texas and Louisiana as well as in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf of Mexico basin began forming in the late Triassic as an intracontinental extension within the North American plate [25].

Salt was accumulated in the Jurassic period and geologically identified as the Louann Salt (mother source), which is a very thick deposit of salt known as halite composed of sodium chloride but with smaller amounts of sulfate, halides, and borates. The salt was followed by carbonate deposition during the Late Jurassic and Cretaceous, and clastic deposits during the Cenozoic [26]. With the deposition of additional sediments on top of this salt, it was buried to over 20,000 feet (6.096 km) and sometimes as deep as 40,000 feet (12.192 km) in the Deep-Water Gulf of Mexico.

The Humble Salt Dome in Harris County, Texas, USA, is one of the interiors of the Gulf Coastal Plain (**Figure 12**), and it is more than 20,000 feet (6.096 km) in diameter and less than 2000 feet (0.6096 km) below the surface.

The Humble Salt Dome estimation depth has been subjected to studies from several authors such as [21, 27–38]. Also, it is worthily mentioning that the calculated salt dome depths calculated by the aforementioned authors' methods, depths were estimated from being considering the shape modeled salt body's center either of a sphere, an infinite long horizontal cylinder, or a semi-infinite vertical cylinder, while in the present method the salt's depths are related to basement rocks depths' and are being estimated from the top of an infinite horizontal slab.
