Po Valley gets environmental okay for Italian gas projects
Australia-listed Po Valley Energy has received full environmental approval for the Selva Malvezzi and Teodorico gas fields in northern Italy, paving the way for the projects to be granted production licences, the company said on April 6.
Po Valley expects to submit the needed documents to apply for these licences sometime before the end of June. In the case of the Selva Malvezzi licence, the company will first need to apply for an agreement between regional and national governments, a standard requirement for onshore development in Italy. This is not necessary for Teodorico, which is offshore in the northern Adriatic sea.
The operator has begun preparing the Selva Malvezzi field, with 2P gas reserves grossing 13.3bn ft3, for production start-up in mid-2022. The first stage of development will involve a gas plant being installed at the Selva/Podere Maiar 1dir well site, and a 1-km pipeline linking the borehole with the national grid. Selva Malvezzi is expected to flow at a rate of 150,000 m3/day from the Medium-Upper Pliocene sands of the Porto Garibaldi formation.
Teodorico, which has the most in-place gas of Po Valley's fields, is at an advanced stage of assessment and is ready for development, Po Valley said.
Po Valley has a 63% interest in the Podere Gallina licence containing the Selva Malvezzi field, while London-listed firms United Oil & Gas and Prospex Energy have 20% and 17% respectively. The group had hoped to bring the field on stream as early as 2020, but the project was held up by the lengthy approval process in Italy, which has also slowed development at Teodorico.
"Gas production at Selva promises to transform Prospex Energy's financial profile and with this in mind the granting of full environmental approval for the development of the field is a key milestone for the company," Prospex chairman Bill Smith commented.
The field should generate annualised revenues several times greater than Prospex's historical corporate costs, he said, which "will enable us to pursue additional low-risk exploration and development opportunities both at Podere Gallina and at our Spanish projects." The company closed a deal at the start of March to acquire El Romeral gas and power project in southern Spain.