ECHO.L Regulatory News (ECHO)

11 Dec 2008 07:00



Independent Resources plc ("IRG" or the "Company")

Update re Fiume Bruna

Start of seismic acquisition operations

The Company is pleased to announce the start of acquisition of new seismic data over the IRG-operated Fiume Bruna coalbed methane (CBM) project near Italy's north-west coast; this is the country's first CBM project. 

This work follows the Italian Government's approval of the Company's seismic and drilling plans announced in September this year. The seismic data will be used to select locations for several wells to be drilled within an agreed area in the coming months. These wells will be put on long-term production tests to determine gas production and any water flow rates from the coal.

Results from earlier seismic and appraisal work, including the drilling and coring of a stratigraphic borehole late in 2006, have produced an in-place resource estimate for Fiume Bruna of 170 billion cubic feet, with a recoverable resource of 92 billion cubic feet.

IRG is working at Fiume Bruna alongside Norwest Questa Engineering, a leading US consultancy group with specialist CBM expertise. Rigs and service companies have been short-listed, and negotiations are at an advanced stage to finalise these contracts.

Background details follow:

Preliminary award of the Fiume Bruna permit was made to Independent Energy Solutions srl (a wholly-owned subsidiary of IRG) 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 IRG's understanding of the coal and its CBM potential.

The Fiume Bruna permit covers some 247 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.

IRG was admitted to AIM in December 2005 and is pursuing an integrated and asset-backed gas trading business in Italy with midstream components in Italy and upstream components within Italy and in North Africa. Along with Fiume Bruna, these include the planned Rivara natural gas storage facility in the Po Valley, and exploration acreage at Ksar Hadada in Tunisia. The Company aims to pursue this long-term strategy in the most environmentally-sustainable way, by whenever possible incorporating from the outset the permanent geological storage of CO2 into its future commodity production and trading. IRG has focused on building a profitable portfolio through wholly-owned initiatives and partnerships.