Gas, the government lowers the ban on gas extraction from 12 to 9 nautical miles

Gas, the government lowers the ban on gas extraction from 12 to 9 nautical miles

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Of the 30-40 billion cubic meters of methane hidden deep beneath the untouchable seabed of the Gulf of Venice, about 15 billion cubic meters, half of it, could be extracted from just a couple of fields. They could be mined with the usual mining gradation, of course; about 700 million cubic meters a year. You can’t extract that methane all at once, and it has to seep slowly over a dozen years from the deep rocks that are soaked with it. If, on the other hand, one wanted to exploit the entire mining capital of the Upper Adriatic, the total investment could be around 2-3 billion euros.

The availability of 10-15 billion cubic meters from the Upper Adriatic is one of the estimates of the effects of aid decree quaterwhich has reopened the use of national fields to replace equal quantities of gas extracted in remote countries, liquefied, loaded onto methane tankers and regassified in Italy.

Thirty years of blockade

In particular, the Government has removed two constraints. It has canceled the total ban on two of the many fields in the Gulf of Venice and in the Upper Adriatic, blocked by law for more than 30 years for fear that extracting methane from the depths of the Adriatic could also have effects on the balance of Venice. The sacred prohibition concerned the deposits north of the parallel of Goro; those in front of the Po delta up to the 45th parallel ma have been released from the constraint the 9 deposits in front of Venice remain prohibited.

Furthermore, the Aiuti quater decree could free up deposits throughout Italy at a distance of more than 9 miles from the coast (16.6 kilometres), instead of the 12 miles (22.2 kilometres) which constitute the limit of territorial waters and the ban on drilling.
for theUpper Adriaticthe total ban on two deposits opposite the Veneto and in front of Comacchio (Ferrara). But adjusting the range to 9 miles could reopen a field off of Toasts and to the large reserves of the Channel of Sicily such as the Argo and Cassiopea areas but also the Panda field which could yield 1.7 billion cubic metres.

The large deposit along the coast

Why can only a few of the 30-40 billion cubic meters of the Upper Adriatic be used? The answer is simple. Some prohibitions remain.

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