In July 2008, Surrey County Council granted planning permission for temporary drilling and appraisal at our existing wellsite within Albury Park as part of the overall gas storage initiative proposed for the gasfield. We expect to start preliminary site work in September, with the temporary drilling programme following in October / November.

The plans involve drilling up to two new wells over a period of 18 weeks and will be followed by a low-key appraisal process. The planning application was supported by an environmental appraisal which includes a comprehensive acoustic study concluding that, with suppression measures and with the benefit of being enclosed in a heavily wooded site, noise regulations will not be contravened at the nearest properties.

The assessment drilling is needed is order to assess whether the potential to store gas in the field extends below the known geological structure of what is known as Albury 1. By drilling into lower strata, the company can determine whether an Albury 2 store might be possible in the longer term.

We have previously told the Albury Liaison Committee that there is a known gas storage capacity of six billion cubic feet in Albury 1 and have already made a preliminary application to the Secretary of State at the Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform for storage authorisation. The Minister has subsequently given the go ahead for a full application which will coincide with a planning application to SCC for the surface wellsite and gas processing plant.

We believe the Albury 2 permeable rock strata could have 24 billion cubic feet of gas available for extraction and would then be suitable as a gas store; but we need the trial drilling to establish its potential more firmly. That project would be subject to separate permissions. We have stressed that the Albury 1 and Albury 2 projects are independent.

We have also told the liaison committee that our plans for Albury 1 do not involve further development of the Albury wellsite as a gas processing facility. The plant would instead be built near Send Prison in the parish of Ripley which would be on the route of the six-mile pipeline carrying gas between the proposed reservoir and the regional gas transmission system near Ockham.