Po Valley Energy Limited has achieved a 38% increase in the area of its gas exploration rights in northern Italy - including licences located in one of the country's former largest onshore gas fields in the Po Valley.
The Company announced it has been awarded two adjacent gas exploration licences, Cadelbosco di Sopra and Grattasasso, located between Modena and Parma. The two new licences are for initial exploration terms of six years.
The new licences enlarge Po Valley's gas exploration footprint in northern Italy by 547 square kilometres to a total of nearly 2,000 square kilometres.
The award of these two new licences is consistent with the Company's strategy of growing its gas production base by bringing promising new targets into its exploration portfolio.
Commenting on the award of the new exploration permits, Po Valley's Chief Executive Officer, Mr Giovanni Catalano, said:
"The award of the Cadelbosco di Sopra and Grattasasso permits adds a number of promising well-defined opportunities to our existing diversified portfolio of assets. We are accelerating the final technical and evaluation work on the Quaternary prospects and anticipate submitting a formal application for drilling by the third quarter of this year. With drilling success, development planning would proceed immediately."
"The pursuit of new exploration permits demonstrates the Company's ability to identify and capture quality new opportunities in the Po Valley and its commitment to enhancing its long term growth prospects".
The new combined licences cover the Correggio structure, a former ENI gas field discovered in the 1950s. During ENI's ownership, the field produced more than 253 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas from a stacked multipool reservoir - one of the largest onshore gas fields in the Po Valley.
A re-evaluation of the Correggio field is underway, with the support of ENI's past production data, in order to assess the potential for additional reserves within the Quaternary and Pliocene reservoirs in the Cadelbosco di Sopra and Grattasasso licence areas.
Following thorough geological studies and seismic interpretation of existing data in the Correggio gas field, Po Valley has identified two priority gas prospects in the Quaternary reservoirs, Zini and Canolo. The Zini prospect is located in the Cadelbosco di Sopra area while Canolo straddles both licences. The Company's technical team is also finalising evaluation of the Pliocene gas potential. It is anticipated that plans for a drilling campaign will be finalised later this year.
The two new blocks also include the former ENI oil discoveries, Ravizza in the Grattasasso permit and Bagnolo-in-Piano within the area of Cadelbosco di Sopra.
An evaluation is underway to assess the development potential of both discoveries.
Dedicated Reservoir Engineering and Management is finalising a static and dynamic reservoir study on the Quaternary and Pliocene targets using ENI seismic, well log and production data and technical reports.
The work programme for the permits may require commissioning a seismic 3D survey, with the aim of confirming the size of the potential of additional gas reserves within the former Correggio gas field, assessing the development potential of the Ravizza and Bagnolo-in-Piano oil discoveries and identifying new prospects and leads.