Technical investments

Technical investments in 2015 amounted to €170 million, a reduction of €70 million, or 29.2%, compared with the previous year (€240 million).

The main investments in the development of new fields and upgrading of capacity (€117 million) primarily concerned the following initiatives:

• Bordolano (€73 million): the first execution phase of the project was completed, and part of the plant subsequently became operational;
• Minerbio (€17 million): purchase of materials, execution of works and repowering at the plants;
• Fiume Treste (€13 million): drilling at the new well to upgrade the plant’s peak services.

Maintenance and other investments (€53 million) mainly concerned the injection of cushion gas at Sabbioncello (€10 million), the project for renovating the compression units at Cortemaggiore (€6 million), and projects involving the development of new IT systems.

INVESTMENT PROPORTIONS BY TYPE (% of total investments)

Thanks to the significant investments made to develop new deposits and upgrade existing ones, Stogit exceeded the previous maximum quantity of gas deposits in its storage systems, thereby increasing its volume and peak capacity. Total storage capacity as at 31 December 2015, including strategic storage, was 16.0 billion cubic metres (+0.1 billion cubic metres compared with 2014), of which 11.5 billion cubic metres related to available capacity fully allocated for the 2015-2016 thermal year (11.4 billion cubic metres in the 2014-2015 thermal year), and 4.5 billion cubic metres related to strategic storage (unchanged compared with the 2014-2015 thermal year)¹⁵.