Shell Ireland has announced that it is about to resume work on the development of Corrib Gas Field off the Mayo coast.
The company says work on the gas well head, 75km west of the Erris Peninsula, will get under way in April.
Shell says this work is entirely separate from its plans to lay a highly controversial pipeline from the offshore well to a land-based gas terminal at Bellanaboy in north Mayo.
Work on the wells, discovered off the Mayo coast in 1996, was suspended in 2001 and the wells have remained capped ever since.
However, Shell plans to resume work on the well head which lies 1,000 feet below the seabed.
Shell says it is in the process of getting permission from the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources for the work and it will not begin until it gets regulatory approval.
