Fiume Bruna permit awarded
Issued by First City Financial (UK) Ltd
Independent Resources plc
("Independent Resources" or the "Company")
Further to the announcement of 22 April 2008, Independent Resources plc, the AIM-quoted natural
gas and exploration company has won clearance to drill multiple wells for production testing at
its Fiume Bruna coalbed methane (CBM) project in northern Italy.
The Tuscan Regional Government has approved an application to drill up to eight new wells within
an agreed area, and to acquire new seismic data. It is also passing its approval on to Italy's
Ministry of Economic Development which, it is hoped, will formalise the Fiume Bruna exploration
permit by ministerial decree.
Results from earlier seismic and appraisal work, including the drilling and coring of a
stratigraphic borehole late in 2006, have produced a resource estimate for Fiume Bruna of 170
billion cubic feet, with a recoverable resource of 92 billion cubic feet.
The project also carries the longer term potential to become a permanent storage site for carbon
dioxide (CO2). Adding an environmental benefit has attracted positive interest from within the
Tuscan Regional Government, local administrations, and regional industrial stakeholders. A CO2
injection programme will both reduce the potential impact of CO2 emissions on global climate
change and enhance methane production.
Independent Resources plc (IRG) Executive Chairman Grayson Nash said: "This new approval
constitutes a key permitting milestone, and we are delighted that our patience, hard work, and
thoughtful attention to finding political consensus has carried us through this important stage.
Fiume Bruna is a potentially significant resource, and we believe this new success reflects our
innovative approach to unconventional resources and sustainable development"
At Fiume Bruna, IRG is working alongside Norwest Questa Engineering ("NQE"), a leading US
consultancy group with specialist CBM expertise. The next phase of the project will involve the
acquisition and processing of new seismic data and the drilling of the first well to be put on
long-term production test. The main purpose of this test is to determine gas production and water
flow rates from the coal. Detailed planning for this work has continued with NQE throughout 2007
and into 2008 and is expected to be put into effect later this year. Rigs and service companies
available to carry out the work have been short-listed, and negotiations are in progress. A
seismic acquisition and processing contractor has been engaged.
For further information contact:
Stephen Staley, Managing Director, Independent Resources plc: 01332 865 253
07771 838 753
Allan Piper, First City Financial Public Relations: 020 7242 2666
Jon Hinton/David Smith, Deloitte Corporate Finance (NOMAD) 020 7936 3000
Background details follow:
The 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 our understanding of
this coal and its CBM potential.
The Fiume Bruna permit covers some 267 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 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.
Independent Resources plc
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