hb - we KNOW there is plenty of oil on the blocks - there are 1500 wells that used to produce and many of them can probably be restarted over time, albeit at lowish rates. And oil only gets to shallow levels from deeper structures. Yet there has been no deeper drilling to speak of because of the difficulties of "seeing" through salt with older seismic. The risk is simply that there may not be traps in the deeper structures. However, there are at least 69 salt domes on Blocks A and E and that every single salt dome that has been drilled to date in the pre-Caspian Basin to date has contained oil or gas.
The salt domes are like mushrooms. The oil and gas is found under the "caps."