India, Sept. 13 -- If a country has oil and gas reserves, must it drill for it? At a time when the conflict in West Asia has hotted up again, and crude oil prices are back on the boil, this may seem a strange question to ask.

But I do so nonetheless, to encourage BRICS leaders gathered in Delhi for the 18th summit of the grouping to contemplate the relevance of the orthodoxy "drill, baby, drill", against the backdrop of the altered landscape of petroleum market fundamentals.

The fact is that the lead time between the drilling of the first well of a new hydrocarbon exploration venture, discovery, the appraisal of this discovery, the creation of the development infrastructure and then first production could be anywhere between 10 years an...