Australia’s Po Valley granted large onshore oil exploration licence in northern Italy

The licence covers an area of 111 km² and contains a large, highly attractive oil exploration target. The licence has a six year initial exploration period.

Its main exploration play is a Mesozoic carbonate structure with structural analogies to the ENI Villa Fortuna field (230 million bbls produced).

Preliminary seismic analysis indicates the presence of a large, faulted anticline with relatively shallow depth targets ranging between 3500/4000 m. A well drilled 15 km to the southwest (Sarsina-1 well) in a down-dip location had oil shows in the core from the same reservoir.

Po Valley’s initial Torre del Moro plan is to collect existing geological data and purchase existing 2D seismic data to evaluate and define the potential size of the field.