Technical investments
Technical investments made by the Company in 2020 totalled 134 million euros, an increase of 22 million euros (approximately +19.6%) compared with the previous year and refer to investments to develop new fields and upgrade capacity (7 million euros) and investments in maintenance and sundry (127 million euros).
These latter mainly refer to: (i) “work over” activities on existing wells, in particular at Cortemaggiore, for the restoration to operation of wells made unavailable due to the loss of mechanical integrity, and in Ripalta; (ii) engineering works on the TC1 plant at Sergnano and the compressor units; (iii) IT projects (16 million euros), mainly for the Consumption Cloud – Azure Credit project and for the purchase of licenses and projects on system renewals.
Investment proportions by type (% of total investments)
Total storage capacity as at 31 December 2020, including strategic storage, was 17.0 billion cubic metres (unchanged with respect to 2019), of which 12.5 billion cubic metres related to available capacity fully allocated for the thermal year 2020-2021 and 4.5 billion cubic metres related to strategic storage (unchanged compared with thermal year 2019-2020, as established by the Ministry of Economic Development by means of the notice dated 17 January 202051.
51 By means of the Decree of 12 February 2021, the Ministry of Economic Development confirmed that the strategic gas storage volume for thermal storage year 2021-2022 (1 April 2021-31 March 2022) would remain at 4.62 billion standard cubic metres, 4.5 billion cubic metres of which was allocated to Stogit. By means of the announcement of 17 January 2020, the Ministry confirmed the strategic gas storage volume for the thermal year 2020-2021 (1 April 2020-31 March 2021) as 4.62 billion cubic metres, 4.5 billion cubic metres of which was allocated to Stogit