Last checked at 8 Feb 2010 07:00
Independent Resources plc ("IRG" or the "Company")
Update on Fiume Bruna
Operational update on the appraisal of Italy's first
coalbed methane project
February 8th, 2010: The Company is pleased to announce an update on the appraisal campaign that is designed to demonstrate commercially-viable natural gas flow from the Fiume Bruna coal seam, located near Grosseto, Italy.
Having secured the necessary permits, the Company's wholly-owned subsidiary Independent Energy Solutions ("IES") has begun civil works for the preparation of the Fiume Bruna 2 well site, which marks the official start of drilling operations on this site.
A drilling rig has been contracted and will be re-entering and testing a 344m deep borehole previously named Pietra 1, a pre-license stratigraphic well which successfully identified a single seam of gas-active coal and shale approximately seven metres thick. The main purpose of this operation is to evaluate the best means to undertake production testing so as to determine gas and any water flow rates from the gas saturated coal and shale in place. Once site preparation has been completed, drilling operations are expected to last for two weeks.
Approximately 66 km of 2D seismic data have been acquired to date over a representative portion of the coal basin to determine the geometry of the coal seam away from the former mining area. This includes the portion shot prior to drilling last year which has since been reprocessed.
A regional depositional model has been constructed from the reinterpretation of the stratigraphy of a large number of vintage boreholes, leading to the discovery of a variably thick gas-bearing carbonaceous shale sequence consistently located immediately above and below the coal seam.
Independent Resources Chairman Grayson Nash commented: "Fiume Bruna has thrown up a few challenges, not least the discovery in August last year of a thick evaporitic sequence in the deeper part of the basin. This, combined with some bureaucratic procedures and a period of locally heavy rain, has slowed us down. But we now look forward to producing gas and proving this large resource. In addition, our discovery of gas shale in this basin, whose extent we hope to confirm soon, is something we look forward to testing over the next few months."
The above information has been reviewed and verified by Roberto Bencini, Technical Director of Independent Resources, for the purposes of the Guidance Note for Mining, Oil and Gas Companies issued by the London Stock Exchange in March 2006. Mr. Bencini is a chartered geologist. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the Geological Society of London and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
| For further information contact: |
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| Grayson Nash | Independent Resources plc | +39 06 4549 0720 |
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| Allan Piper | Tavistock Communications | 07736 064 982 |
| Duncan McCormick |
| 020 7920 3150 |
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| Jonathan Wright | Seymour Pierce Limited | 020 7107 8000 |
| David Banks |
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| Richard Redmayne |
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Background details follow:
The Fiume Bruna exploration permit was awarded to Independent Energy Solutions srl (a wholly-owned subsidiary of IRG) in 2008.
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 late 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.
The Fiume Bruna licence has an estimated 4.8 billion cubic metres (167 billion cubic feet) of in-place resource, and results from initial testing indicated an estimated recoverable resource of 2.6 billion cubic metres (91.4 billion cubic feet). Longer-term, it also has potential for carbon sequestration, permanently disposing of carbon dioxide (CO2) from nearby sources. At the same time, an estimated additional 1.8 billion cubic metres (63.6 billion cubic feet) of methane would be produced as a result of this injection of CO2.
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.