8) How he thinks either application is going to be approved if...

8) How he thinks either application is going to be approved if there are multiple infractions to the guidelines:
1) Submitted 20 days before end of “permit year”. 40day infraction of the Offshore Petroleum Exploration Guideline. - From memory, they submitted it in Nov/19 but wasn't accepted until late Jan 2021? In any event, accepted on the 23/1/2020 being 21 normal days to the end of the permit year. Unless it specifies BD? I cant find where in the legislation this is, so keen for your input

2) Expired without fulfilling the permit conditions. - Permit stays on foot while application is running, so wouldn't say this is an infraction. See pretty standard from my cursousy review that permit conditions arent met while there is a suspension/ extension application underway.

3) The joint authority requested further information to the first application (couldn't approve it in that form), Not unreasonable that the political decision-maker asks for more information, not sure how this would be classed as an infraction. I would have thought this would be classed as an RFI

4) Whether or not EP386's rejection will influence the NOPTA decision because they can look at past performance of the applicants parent companies: Not sure here as i'm not aware of the reasonings of the refusal (pretty sure they dont release them?)

Probably hard to conclusively say there were/ wasn't infractions from the outside.