East Midlands

The East Midlands Coalfield is a concealed Carboniferous (Westphalian) coal basin which was worked historically from deep mines located to the west of Composite Energy's licence areas. The coals and underlying marine shales are generally considered to be the source of conventional oil and gas accumulations within the East Midlands hydrocarbon province.

During 2009 Composite Energy successfully completed 6 cored exploration wells across the East Midland Licence Areas. These vertical wells ranged from 4,250' to 5,484' deep with an average of 1,700' of 3" diameter core recovered from each well with overall core recovery approaching 98%.

Where the entire coal bearing sequence was cored, a net coal thickness ranging from 28' to 56' was encountered. Maximum seam thickness is generally around 5'-6' although some wells seams are closely spaced creating a completeable interval some 12-18' thick with 6-10' of net coal. Each well contains a number of seams greater than 2.5' thick which is currently considered the minimum seam thickness which can be completed using horizontal drilling technology.

Dry ash free (DAF) gas contents for completeable coal seams range from around 140scf/ton to 340scf/ton.

The East Midlands basin has the potential for development of CBM, shale and conventional oil and gas which have been encountered in certain drilling operations in 2009 and Composite is evaluating its commercial development options