>You wrote that in order for a Production licence to be awarded one condition is proof of viable productive flows.

Quite the contrary actually, there were several other posters back then that kept saying Falcon wouldn't get a production license until they proved the project was economical. I agued that according to my understanding of the mining law, that was not the case. I guess I was right :)

In a case of a conventional play, then a company would probably have to flow a substantial amount of oil or gas before getting a license, but with an unconventional play like this one, it could take many years to find out if it's going to be economical or not. However, a company might not want to commit to years of experimenting unless they have a production license, so it may have been a catch 22 situation.

I am assuming that they did have to show some sort of 'proof of concept' though. Falcon got it's production license after they did some testing of the wells. The Mining Act states that they have to find "exploitable" hydrocarbons. It just doesnt say "economically exploitable" !

I think the same situation applies to MOL. They applied for a production license on Area 89 back in Sept 2006, and only just got got it on Jan 28 of this year. I wonder if they found something 'exploitable' :)

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The mining supervision shall designate a mining lease for exploration and exploitation of definite mineral raw materials, if the applicant

a) certifies by data of exploration (closing report of exploration or report on asset calculation) that exploitable mineral resources are to be found at the site requested to be delimited by the mining lease,

There is no definition for 'exploitable' but there is one for 'exploitation'

‘Exploitation’ shall mean the extraction, separation and bringing to the surface of mineral raw material from their natural site of occurrence