Sound Energy PLC (LON:SOU) provided photographic evidence that work may be about to get underway on a potentially needle-moving well in Italy.
It showed that ground-works at Badile, within the Piedmont Lombard Basin, in the north of the country.
It has a bit of ‘nearology’ to it as it is next to the ENI-run Gaggiano oil field, which is host to around 400mln barrels of crude.
In fact ENI originally held the permit and shot some 460 line-kilometres of seismic before surrendering it 12 years ago.
WATCH: Zak Mir tells us just how much more Sound could be worth
Work in 2013 by the oil and gas reservoir evaluation specialist, ERC Equipoise, confirmed Badile as a potentially high-impact prospect.
It reckoned it was worth more than £400mln if hydrocarbons were uncovered in the quantities anticipated.
The figure was based on a gross prospective resource of 178bn standard cubic feet of (bscf) gas and 12mln barrels of gas condensate. That was a “mid-case” estimate. The high and the low cases were respectively 673bscf and 46bscf.
The Twitter pic showed the ground cleared and level with the caption: “Sound Energy shares snapshot of the Badile site this morning, where ground works are underway...”
Sound Energy shares snapshot of the Badile site this morning, where ground works are underway... pic.twitter.com/JK9lr94tuq
— Sound Energy (@soundenergyplc) September 27, 2016
The company’s shares have enjoyed a spectacular run over the last three months as they have advanced more than 400%.
That movement was prompted not by Italy, but the success it has enjoyed in Morocco, where it is drilling its second well on the Tendara licence.
The company believes Tendara could potentially be host to several trillion cubic feet of gas.
What surprised management was that rate at which the first well, T6, flowed.
Finance director Mary Hood in a recent Proactive interview said: “Did the multi-TCF potential surprise us?
“No, it didn’t, but, what we were looking for was a commercial flow rate of say 3 to 3.5 million scuffs [standard cubic feet or ‘scf’] per day, and what we’ve actually got from that first well, the T6 well, is a flow rate of 17mln scuffs per day.”
She added: “It definitely surpassed our expectations.”