Independent Resources (LON:IRG), the AIM listed energy group, saw its share price soar by 15% to 79p this morning on news of promising results from its Fiume Bruna 2 well testing and an update on the appraisal campaign of its unconventional gas acreage at Fiume Bruna and Casoni, located near Grosseto in Italy. Among the highlights from the latest work, the company reported “excellent gas quality and water manageability” from recent production testing at the coalbed methane (CBM) project. It also announced a significant resource upgrade and confirmed the presence of a deeper basin that has triggered a reclassification of the entire project as a shale gas play.

The Casoni and Fiume Bruna blocks cover more than 450 sq km and contain more than 140 sq km of potentially productive area with a coal plus gas shale sequence at an average depth of 1000m. As a result of the latest work, the company has upgraded its previously-announced gross prospective estimates of in-place gas and recoverable gas to 2C Contingent Resources of 300 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas and 160 bcf, respectively. These figures now include both the Fiume Bruna and Casoni blocks. Previously, the in-place resource estimate for Fiume Bruna stood at 170 bcf, with a recoverable resource of 92 bcf.

Independent Resources began work at Fiume Bruna, near Italy’s north-west coast, in December 2008 after receiving approval from the government to start seismic work on what was Italy’s first CBM project. The project is an addition to Independent’s flagship Rivara gas storage project in Italy’s Po Valley, where it is hoping to secure a licence in the coming months. At Fiume Bruna, a combination of technical challenges, bureaucratic obstacles and poor weather have slowed progress but a new well, FB2, was finally drilled and put on test from its target zone of 340m in mid-April. The results of the test work have turned out to be a revelation, showing that the coal is relatively easy to capture and gas flowed to the surface at high quality (93-94% of methane, with 1-2% of higher hydrocarbons, 4% nitrogen and only 1% CO2).

The company noted that the thermogenic gas, formed at high pressure and temperature from the natural cracking of the organic matter in the rock matrix, was found in a rock with insufficient thermal maturity to generate gas. This is…

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