Sound Energy PLC (LON:SOU) has begun drilling the hotly-anticipated Badile well in Italy, adding more spice to the investment story.
To date the company has scored significant success at Tendrara, in Morocco, where it has discovered significant accumulations of potentially commercial gas.
However, Sound’s Italian assets were the foundation stone on which the company was built and it has two producing wells – although their output is modest.
Badile, however, could be a changer. An independent assessment suggests the target could be host to around 178bn standard cubic feet of gas with a net present value of £400mln.
That figure is what’s called a ‘best case’, unrisked estimate. It sits at in the middle of the range with the ‘high case’ forecast being 670bn cubic feet and the ‘low case’ 46bn cubic feet.
Anyway, work on the well, located in the north of the country, around 10 miles from Milan, began on Tuesday (March 7).
The plan is to go down to a total depth of 4,445 metres with drilling and logging expected to take 100 days.
Assuming gas is found, it will take a further 25 days for completion and testing.