They are ‘unused’ because there is no oil there................
not quite...two different things: leases and drilling permits. Leases give a right to explore and look for deposits. If deposits are found then they file for the permit. No deposits not permit requests.
The environmental weenies try to conflate the two to make it look like companies are either a) knowingly keeping the price high or b) oil is nearly all gone...neither is true but both serve their agenda.
Bigger question is how many permit requests there are that are still not approved because they are being held up by the bureacracy.
The big picture is with huge sums of business money on the line, being told gas powered vehicles will be banned on a certain date means the risk of short term investment and certainly of long term would not be wise. So , gee, look, oil producers are discouraged from investing.
Exactly! Someone in the media needs to grow a pair and call this lying SOB out!
No I think they are unused because the government needs a whole crap load of money and they raised royalties that the government would get out of it and nobody’s really interested in putting out a bunch of money just to give the government way more profit than they should get
Or there is no chance to get it from there to anywhere.