News

March 05, 2010

Independent Resources Advances Italy’s First CBM Project

Unlike North America and Australia, where coal bed methane resources are making significant contributions to energy supplies, operators in Western Europe have been slow to grasp the resource opportunities presented by the gas trapped in coal seams. In the UK, AIM-quoted IGas Energy sells gas to the grid from its on-site generation facility at Doe Green in Cheshire while in France, ASX minnow European Gas Limited is inching its huge Lorraine CBM project towards first gas. Another AIM company, Independent Resources, is working on Italy’s first CBM project, Fiume Bruna, near Grosseto in Tuscany.

The Fiume Bruna permit covers 247 sq km in an area that was host to an active coal industry until the late 1950s, when the mines were abandoned in the wake of a major explosion. The permit carries an in-place reserves estimate of 167 billion cubic feet, of which some 91.4 bcf is thought to be recoverable.  Independent Resources holds 100 per cent of what could prove to be a material resource: after all, this is onshore, shallow drilling in a major EU economy where a growing deficit of gas...