2  BIS Review 56/2006  In both the developed and the developing world, another factor holding back investment in oil infrastructure has been concern on the part of producers that oil prices might fall back as they did in the 1980s and 1990s. In light of that recognition, some oil producers have been reluctant to launch exploration projects even with today's high prices.
Such concerns have been reinforced by the huge reserves of oil in several OPEC countries that could be extracted at very low cost if sufficient resources and expertise were directed toward doing so. Developments in the natural gas market The story for natural gas shares some similarities with the story for oil, but there are important differences as well.