Last August Malabu sued Shell, accusing it of colluding with Nigerian officials to snatch its juicy oil prospecting license, OPL 245, a giant block in the deepwater area of the Niger Delta, with estimated reserves of more than 1 billion barrels.

FORBES: Dirty Oil

Deepwater drilling in the area west of Shetland has attracted strong criticism.

BBC: Chevron begins designs for drilling west of Shetland

Chevron has 100 prospective drilling spots in the Gulf of Mexico, but its highest hopes for a resumption of deepwater drilling lay in an area called the Lower Tertiary Wilcox trend, near where the continental shelf drops off into deep water.

FORBES: Magazine Article

His Vanco Energy, in Houston, Texas, has 11 million hectares of exploration and drilling rights in the area--more deepwater rights than Shell, ExxonMobil and BP combined.

FORBES: An oilman's last hurrah

Of course, after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, this is not the most propitious climate for deepwater drilling, particularly in an area routinely described as pristine.

ECONOMIST: The final frontier for Britain��s oil and gas industry