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 ITALY
Southern Europe
The Italian oil industry is dominated by ENI, once led by
the famous Enrico Mattei. Traditionally foreign companies have only had
access to areas that ENI has declined or relinquished.
 ENI’s
subsidiary, Agip, has also been successful overseas and some large
private Italian companies, such as Montedison, invest in the industry.
Although oil has been produced in Italy since 1860, the first major
fields to be discovered were Ragusa and Gela in Sicily in the 1950s
followed by Rospo in 1974 all in the foreland region.
In fact around half of Italy’s oil had been discovered by
1984 including deep oil in the Lombardy basin and oil in the sub-thrust
province in the southern Appennines which may hold around 40% of Italy’s
total reserves.
The country has two offshore producing areas, however the
country is geologically complex and oil fields tend to be small and
difficult to produce. In the north, where production began offshore in
1965, the Po Basin contains mainly gas fields, some of which are located
offshore in the northern Adriatic Sea. The Mio-Pliocene gas reservoirs
are in communication with shallow biogenic source-rocks, which continue
to replenish them. ENI is developing the Tea, Arnica and Lavanda gas
fields located 60 km off the coast.
 In the south a large basin extends offshore over the
Adriatic Sea and southwards to Sicily and Malta and its adjoining shelf.
The Triassic Toarmina Formation is the source-rock, with overlying
Jurassic carbonates offering reservoirs of mixed quality. The Sicilian
trend was extended offshore and offshore production began in 1980. The
largest oilfield, Vega, was found in 1981.
Exploration on mainland Italy and the Adriatic Sea was
stepped up in the 1980s and the large heavy oil field, Rospo Mare, was
found offshore in the central Adriatic near Pescara. ENI’s largest
offshore oil field, Aquila, developed off Brindisi in the 1990s in the
southern Adriatic is in decline.
The challenge has been to achieve sufficient seismic
resolution to identify deep prospects in the carbonate platform. In
2002, ENI announced a large gas discovery in the Sicily Channel drilled
on the Panda exploration prospect. Panda could hold an estimated 20 Bcm
of gas.
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