The presence and exploitation of oil in Italy is certainly very ancient and dates back at least to Roman times, because the demonstrations were in the Apennines natural oil used as fuel and waterproofing.
The draw held at the end of a regular production of oil began in 1860 using several wells in the vicinity of the natural manifestations of leakage in the Northern Apennines.
But the complex geology and stratigraphy of this area of the Apennines had not yet been fully studied and were still many unresolved issues, oil exploration then concentrated Emiliano Apennines, where they appear in the scaly clays (Liguride), did not great progress and modest productivity gains were achieved with the improvement of the extraction technique than with the identification and exploitation of new deposits. In fact there is an increase in tons of oil extracted by passing 1000 tons in 1891 to 10,000 in 1911 and 20,000 in '31.
The first major conceptual breakthrough in the structural geological situation occurred with Caesar Leek, although the exploration techniques did not allow an objective of his theories. In fact, speculated that the scaly clays could be the "rock" but they had needed to be a good permeability reservoir (see oil) from which to extract the oil.Near the Italian production of oil from 1944 to 1984 in the TOE (tonnes of oil equivalent), in the field of Narcissus with relative seismic section (Pieri, Oil Zanichelli Ed).
Mattei, Agip leadership.
Only in 1940 was available seismic reflection survey (research method that uses the compression waves, earthquakes see) and in 1944 came the first important discovery of the deposit Caviaga (near Lodi, has 46 producing wells that extract pure methane for 97% and containing 2.2% for the higher hydrocarbons and the reservoir was discovered in the sands of the Miocene Pliocene on the substrate, the porosity of the reservoir is 29% with a maximum thickness of 300 meters. The depth of extraction is of 1404 meters.
The trap is a structural one, namely an anticline), whose reserves of 12 billion cubic meters of methane demonstrated the economic potential of this new type of research. From 1944 to 1987 were drilled exploratory wells in Italy about 1800 at an average depth of 3000 meters, which have identified about 300 fields.There are many areas of interest such as oil in the Po Valley Italy, studied and used mostly by Agip (Italian General Petroleum Company), under the leadership of E. Mattei in 1953 he obtained the exclusive right to the whole area and the Po Valley Veneta.
This allowed him to make an exploration of organic and represents the best example of a portion of territory in which the advancement of knowledge and stratigraphic geology is entirely due to oil exploration.
Within this area (about 52,000 sq km, 1 / 6 of the whole Italian territory) have identified several interesting structures as clastic and carbonate rock deposits with structural traps, stratigraphic and mixed (see petroleum).