Quote Originally Posted by Geoff Parkstone View Post
I think they know where stuff is, Swale, but deepwater drilling has ceased whilst oil prices have been relatively low as its uneconomic. With prices going up, deepwater drilling becomes more economic and so oil companies will start drilling. Of course OPEC will see this and bring more oil into production themselves, quicker than deepwater development, and so push the price back down. This is ultimately what is wanted and the threat to restart deepwater activities will often achieve - in theory - all down to market cartels like OPEC controlling the price IM afraid!
You don't need an exploration licence to restart on known fields, these are new exploration licences which were supposed to have been stopped under the move away from fossil fuels, so they won't be contributing for many years.

Even with existing fields that they may have stopped exploiting, or resources which they know about but haven't tapped into, we are talking about a process which takes on average 5 years before full scale production happens.