IGas Energy Plans Drilling

IGas Energy Plc (IGAS), the  U.K. coal-bed methane producer, plans to drill as many as six wells in northern England.

The company markets methane gas found in seams of coal and currently generates electricity for the country’s grid from gas produced at Doe Green. IGas is looking to drill as many as two more wells at Doe Green, two at Barton and one each at Ince Marshes and Ellesmere Port.

“During the next nine months we will be operational at five sites and will have more wells being drilled than in the previous four years,” Chairman Francis Gugen said.

The company doubled its resource base to 1.7 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable gas through the acquisition of Nexen Petroleum Exploration U.K., a unit of Nexen Inc. It also undertook a   share sale to accelerate drilling.

Such technology has the potential to contribute to the U.K.’s energy security of supply after the nuclear disaster in Japan cast a cloud over the nation’s atomic ambitions.

“Japan has changed the equation,” Gugen said in a telephone interview. He played down the environmental threat that’s attracted criticism of the development of unconventional resources in the U.S. “It’s very different to shale and is not nearly as invasive.”

Source: Bloomberg