Actually, announcing hypothetical future scenarios can in fact have an impact on price for a long period of time. The market moves toward the marginal cost of production. OPEC's spigot obscures that of course but as their excess capacity dwindles it becomes increasingly relevant.

Anyway.. if people realise that X million barrels of oil will come on in 5yr at a cost of $40/bbl (for example) then it implies bad things for oil prices and the market, being a discount mechanism, will in fact take that into account.

To put it more simply with an example think about how high oil prices went. They didn't go that high because we actually didn't have the stuff but people were discounting geopolitical risk as folks in the middle east were "announcing something" like nuclear programs and the like. All of the "actual data" suggested that Iran didn't have a nuclear weapons program but the market was willing to discount all kids of scenarios.

Corn futures trade up and down w/ the weather forecast.. you don't need "actual data". The promise of significant oil production does do something.