ADX Awarded Exploration Permit Offshore Italy

ADX Energy has announced that the award process for the offshore exploration permit d 364 C.R-.AX in Italian waters has been completed.

The awarded permit is contiguous to ADX’s offshore Tunisian Kerkouane permit which contains the Dougga gas condensate discovery and the Lambouka gas discovery. ADX is the operator of the permit and holds a 100% interest. The adjacent permit d 363 C.R-.AX is under application by ADX.

Previous exploration work within the Pantelleria and Kerkouane permits has identified a number of prospects and leads as well as prospective hydrocarbon fairways which have previously remained undetected. Recently acquired geophysical data has confirmed this interpretation. These highly prospective fairways trend into the offshore areas covered by the new permit. The permit has not seen modern seismic techniques but success in the area has attracted the recent interest of majors such as Shell and Repsol.

The company said that the two Italian offshore blocks are situated in the so called “Terravecchia Foredeep” in front of the Tunisian Atlas thrust front, a geological sub-province of the extensive Italian foredeep and foreland area. This prolific hydrocarbon province hosts a large number of Italy’s oil and gas fields, starting in the Northern Italian Po valley, continuing along the entire Adriatic Sea and through onshore and offshore Sicily into northern Tunisia. ADX commented that for a number of reasons more related to the vicinity of an international boundary than petroleum geology, very little seismic and drilling activity has been undertaken in the past in the areas close to the international border with Tunisia.

ADX said that activity levels in the area are likely to increase significantly given recent discoveries by Edison and ENI in offshore Sicily and the very recent large land acquisition by Shell and Repsol in blocks adjacent to the ADX acreage in both Italy and Tunisia.

Source: ADX Energy