As the Falkland Islands prepares to mark Monday's 30th anniversary of a bitter war, its residents are instead looking to the future amid hopes of an oil boom.

A war of words continues between Argentina and Britain, both of whom have claimed sovereignty over the islands since the British settled there in 1833.

"We want to look up, into the future, moving forward," Jan Cheek, a member of the Falklands Legislative Assembly, told AFP.

The current tense political situation is "an inconvenience, it's a nuisance, it will pass," Cheek said.

She was referring to what the locals, who call themselves "kelpers," say is a blockade by Argentina which has sought to persuade its neighbours to bar enter to ships bearing the Falklands flag, and against their fishing industry.

It is also proposing that the weekly airline flights to the Falkland Islands from Chile should take alternate routes.

The Argentine government announced this month it intends to sue oil companies operating in the archipelago.

But if Argentina represents the past for the islanders, the promise of oil is raising their expectations for the future.

"Hopefully, the first barrel of Falklands oil will come out in the second quarter of 2016," Lewis Clifton, managing director of Byron Marine, told AFP.

Clifton, whose company manages port logistics in the capital, Stanley, said five companies are doing oil exploration in waters near the Falklands.

One of the companies, the British firm Rockhopper, claims to have discovered an oil reserve it estimated at more than one billion barrels, although a more definitive estimate is expected soon.

The potential revenue figures are astronomical for a territory of just over 3,000 people, who until recently survived largely on wool production from the sheep which graze 12,000 square kilometers of windswept land.

They appear to stand on the threshold of becoming the South Atlantic's version of the Middle East's oil-rich Qatar.

Local government officials have been studying oil production methods they hope would not trample their lifestyles, or damage the islands' eco-system which supports some rare wildlife from penguins to albatross and even elephant seals.

"Oil production in the Shetland islands is very much an offshore activity, it hasn't been very intrusive in the Shetland islands," Governor Nigel Haywood told AFP. "Norway could be another example."

They also are considering how millions of petrodollars might change their society, Haywood said.

Some changes are already evident in Stanley.

"We all say that we are very sceptical about oil, but prices of housing in Stanley are going up already," said Sybie, owner of a Stanley gift shop that sells souvenirs to cruise ship passengers who arrive in the summers.

Amid so many oil estimates and speculation -- not including the $30 million a year in revenue from fishing licenses that provide comfortable lifestyles on the islands -- the past has receded in the minds of many kelpers.

Graham Didlick, owner of the Darwin House bed and breakfast and a tourist guide, said: "People want to go on with their lives. We don't think of the war all the time, but we would prefer that things with Argentina were rather different."

Military cemeteries can be found at Darwin and San Carlos. Minefields and battle debris still are scattered among windy, isolated hills.

Everyone questioned about the war remembers where they were at the time.

Tomas Abraham, an Argentine philosopher visiting the islands this week, commented on the significance of the war today.

"Argentina has a stance that sounds anachronistic," he told AFP while walking through the Argentine cemetery in Darwin.

"The heroes of the Falklands are remembered because no one wants to remember that they have a bad conscience for having supported a dictatorship that led them to war and that those heroes died.

"I think the main thing now for Argentina is to concentrate on the geopolitics of the South Atlantic, on how to develop the resources there and even Antarctica, the biggest reservoir of fresh water in the world," he said.

Abraham speculated that the next big conflict for Falkland Islanders would not be with Argentina, but with Britain.

"They'll have so much money that at some point they will go for independence, and they will have trouble with the UK over the cash," he said.

Governor Haywood did not rule out the possibility of a bid for independence.

"England, in its history, has allowed the independence of territories under its control," he said. "But I don't see any evidence of that in the near future at all."