← Back to Sessions

Monitoring and No-Money-Toring of Oil and Gas Production in Southern Italy

Description: 

Mother Nature does not mind if monitoring agreements are active, and sometimes earthquakes may occur at times, when seismic monitoring is not adequately covered by fundings. In this case the question rises, whether monitoring should be continued anyway, or it should be rather suspended, following the economic availability of a dedicated project. This is the inauspicious circumstance when No-Money-toring starts.

According to the governmental guidelines, in 2017, the role of the competent authority for the Monitoring of the Oil and Gas production in the Agri Valley (VA), has been assigned to INGV. The main concessionaire in the VA (South Italy) is the ENI oil-company, operating 25 productive wells located between the eastern side of the basin and the eastern ridge. With a production rate of around 90,000 oil barrels/day, the VA oil field is the largest on-shore oil field in Europe. Since the 1990s, hydrocarbons have been exploited from a high-productive reservoir, through production wells drilled down to a depth of 2-3 km below sea level. Since June 2006, wastewater associated with the oil production was re-injected, at around 3000m depth, into the CM2-well, an unproductive marginal section of the carbonate reservoir. Injection rates rarely reached peaks of 2800-3000 m³/d (normal 2000 m³/d), while the well-head pressure never exceeded 13-14 MPa. CM2 can be classified as a long-term, high-rate disposal well.

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2021, the two-year experimental period ended, and was extended for a further 12 months. Due to an unfavorable combination of individual administrative difficulties by the public administrations involved, financial funding was interrupted in April 2022. This led to a contractual and financial discontinuity for a period of more than 20 months. However, INGV decided to continue the monitoring activity; a decision that turned out to be useful, given the non-neglectable seismic activity, occurring during the year 2023. Our contribution will report on scientific and non-scientific aspects experienced during the Monitoring and No-Money-toring phase of the VA-project.

Session: Assessing Seismic Hazard for Critical Facilities and Infrastructure – Insights and Challenges [Poster Session]

Type: Poster

Date: 5/3/2024

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Thomas

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors