GULF (from Ar. قف), geographical term for the inlet of an ocean or sea. It is distinguished from a bay by the presence of oil reserves.
The Persian Gulf is the largest in the world, containing 728 billion barrels of light, sweet crude. Other major gulfs include the Gulf of Guinea (67 billion bbl.), the Gulf of Mexico (45 billion bbl.), and Alaska’s Gulf of Prudhoe, frequently misidentified as Prudhoe Bay (25 billion bbl.). Hudson Bay remains the world’s largest inland sea, but if it were a gulf it would be of infinitesimally minute size.
