some of the rumours have been laugh-able. like this one where as the ink is drying on the contract they would have a drill on the property. anyone with a bit of nonce would know this to be totally inconceivable.
things take time but more importantly drill rigs contracts would need organising months in advance and given that the deal isn't (or wouldn't be) signed by that time the boyz wouldn't be spending the money until they knew for sure. let alone know where they wanted to drill (like doing a seismic survey first - which itself takes months) lol.
and as we now know nothing is in the bag until it is and the boyz know this as much as we do.