Independent Resources plc has won clearance to drill multiple wells for production testing at its Fiume Bruna coalbed methane (CBM) project in northern Italy. The Tuscan Regional Government has approved an application to drill up to eight new wells within an agreed area, and to acquire new seismic data. It is also passing its approval on to Italy's Ministry of Economic Development, which it is hoped, will formalise the Fiume Bruna exploration permit by ministerial decree.
Results from earlier seismic and appraisal work, including the drilling and coring of a stratigraphic borehole late in 2006, have produced a resource estimate for Fiume Bruna of 170 billion cubic feet, with a recoverable resource of 92 billion cubic feet.
The project also carries the longer term potential to become a permanent storage site for carbon dioxide (CO2). Adding an environmental benefit has attracted positive interest from within the Tuscan Regional Government, local administrations, and regional industrial stakeholders.
A CO2 injection programme will both reduce the potential impact of CO2 emissions on global climate change and enhance methane production.
The Independent Resources plc Executive Chairman Grayson Nash said, "This new approval constitutes a key permitting milestone, and we are delighted that our patience, hard work, and thoughtful attention to finding political consensus has carried us through this important stage. Fiume Bruna is a potentially significant resource, and we believe this new success reflects our innovative approach to unconventional resources and sustainable development"
At Fiume Bruna, IRG is working alongside Norwest Questa Engineering, a leading US consultancy group with specialist CBM expertise. The next phase of the project will involve the acquisition and processing of new seismic data and the drilling of the first well to be put on long-term production test. The main purpose of this test is to determine gas production and water flow rates from the coal. Detailed planning for this work has continued with NQE throughout 2007 and into 2008 and is expected to be put into effect later this year. Rigs and service companies available to carry out the work have been short-listed, and negotiations are in progress. A seismic acquisition and processing contractor has been engaged.
The preliminary award of the Fiume Bruna permit was made to Independent Energy Solutions srl in 2005. Since then the Company has drilled the first CBM stratigraphic borehole in Italy and collected representative coal samples from within the body of the coal deposit. These have been subjected to a wide range of state-of-the-art techniques to arrive at the resource estimates and other vital parameters that underlie our understanding of this coal and its CBM potential.
The Fiume Bruna permit covers some 267 km2, a large part of which is underlain by virgin coal. This generally occurs in one 7 metre thick seam and was the object of mining activity for many years until forced abandonment of mining in the 1950s due to the coal's high methane content. The mineworkings only touched one small area of the overall coal deposit leaving the rest as potential CBM-producing areas.