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.

Romano Prodi, Italy’s prime minister, is off to Kazakhstan next week, apparently in an attempt to turn on the charm over Kashagan, the massive and deeply troubled oil project, where Eni of Italy is the under-performing operator. He might as well have a go; his sprinkling of diplomatic fairy dust has worked in the past, in Russia, for example. But Nursultan Nazarbayev and his allies are not going to get brought round with a side of prosciutto and a bottle of sambuca.

Mr Prodi’s problem is that the Kazakhs have really solid grounds for their grievances. Kashagan  has been horrendously delayed. First oil was originally due in 2005; now the consortium is aiming for the end of 2010, but some analysts see 2011 or 2012 as more realistic. That plus soaring costs, which the Eni-led group can recover from the oil the project produces, will have put back Kazakhstan’s payoff from this huge resource for the best part of a decade. True, the project faces awesome challenges, including the high levels of sulphur in the ground, but those challenges should have been better understood, and a more realistic development plan agreed between the consortium and the Kazakh government. When expectations are out of line, as they clearly were at Kashagan, resentment builds up and relationships break down.

Kazakhstan this week fined Chevron more than $600m for what seemed minor environmental infractions. While it has sounded rather more conciliatory on Kashagan in the past few days, Kazakhstan wants to show that it must be taken seriously. If Russia can do it, its leaders must think, then so can they.

Eni likes to talk the talk about partnerships and relationships with host countries, but it needs to walk the walk as well. At Kashagan, it failed to do that.

Kazakhstan is stepping up the pressure on foreign oil companies, with the parliament approving a bill that would give the state the power to strike out contracts for oil, gas and other resources. Politics in Kazakhstan being what they are, the bill seems certain to become law. (FT stories may require subscription.)

It raises the pressure on Eni and its partners at Kashagan, which are facing an October 22 deadline to settle the dispute over the projects’s costs and the distribution of revenues.

David Thomas of Citigroup, in a recent note, suggested the threat to kick out the Eni-led consortium was hollow.

"While the new law, if passed, would theoretically allow the Kazakh government to cancel the existing Kashagan production sharing agreement, we believe this would be highly unlikely since there are no viable options available to accelerate the technically complex and capitally intensive development of the giant Kashagan field," he wrote.

All the same, the mere possibility, however remote the threat is, will certainly concentrate minds at Eni and its partners.

The Wall Street Journal has a colourful story about MangistauMunaiGaz, or MMG, Kazakhstan’s fifth-largest oil producer. The company is worth $4bn-plus, the story suggests. But with the poltical climate worsening, and MMG’s ownership opaque, it would be a brave western company that took the plunge. The Chinese companies seem more likely bidders.

Meanwhile, the signs from neighbouring Turkmenistan are rather more positive, although it is still early days for most western majors.