For years now, people have been predicting a wave of consolidation in the independent oil and gas sector, but it has never quite arrived. The bid approaches made by Eni of Italy and other to Burren Energy, a UK-listed independent producing oil in Congo-Brazzaville  and Turkmenistan, are interesting in their own right, but do not look like the trickle that is about to turn into a flood of offers.

Burren is negotiating from a position of strength. As Dresdner Kleinwort observed, it is a uniquely good fit for Eni, with a sizeable minority stake on the very promising M’Boundi field in Congo, where the Italian group is the operator, and a presence in Turkmenistan, one of the few resource-rich countries where the politics appear to be moving towards greater openness, rather in the opposite direction. Given the size of Eni’s headache in Kazakhstan, a bit of relief in a different country on the Caspian Sea might be particularly welcome. Eni’s £10.50 a share proposal is a big premium to the three-month average, but well below Tuesday’s close of £11.80. It looks as though Eni will have to go quite a lot higher to get Burren. DK suggested £13 a share might be possible.

Elsewhere in the sector, we have a couple of deals or potential deals under way in oil services, which make a lot of sense in such a cyclical industry, and a bit of action in Canada. That aside, there is not much going on. The high and volatile oil price seems to be one of the reasons. When oil is expensive, producers’ cash flows get boosted, allowing them to cling on the independence a while longer. Were oil to drop below $50 a barrel and stay there, many companies would be forced to reassess their prospects. Volatility is bad for deal-making, too, because it encourages divergent expectations among sellers and buyers; when their aspirations diverge, agreeing a price is difficult.

BG Group, for example, is often cited as a potential takeover target, most recently being named by a Brazilian magazine as the object of a potential joint approach from Royal Dutch Sell and Petrobras. It is very likely that Shell and its advisers ran their calculators over BG - it would be amazing if the had not - but it seems it would have been impossible to get the numbers to work in terms of making the deal earnings-enhancing for Shell’s shareholders. The involvement of Petrobras is unclear; it’s interest may have been a garbled rumour following BG’s success in finding oil and gas in very deep water off Brazil.

Chinese and Indian companies are always being suggested as possible bidders, for Burren or any other company. They have the money, and do not have to keep shareholders happy to the same degree that Western companies do. Oil Search of Papua New Guinea was the subject of persistent rumours - in the South China Morning Post, among other places - about an approach from CNPC Exploration of China. But after the Unocal fiasco, the Chinese companies seem cautious.

None of this means we won’t see any more bids coming in; the Burren saga certainly looks like it has got more twists yet to come. But before there is a big shake-out, conditions in the market will have to change. And that means an oil price that is more stable, or lower, or ideally both.