Evaluation of deep fresh to low-salinity groundwater resources preserved along the Central Mediterranean coastlines (southern Italy and Malta), as an important potential unconventional source of water.

Italy has been extensively explored for hydrocarbons for more than 70 years, with the drilling of more than 7000 wells have been drilled for hydrocarbon exploration and production, creating, as a result, a wide dataset of subsurface data. Also the Malta archipelago, which is geologically connected of the south of Sicily in southern Italy, has been place of (much lesser) exploration and drilling activities. Some of these wells, in both Sicily and Malta, have revealed indications of deep fresh to low-salinity groundwater.
The University of Malta, through a research group and funded research programs (e.g. Marie-Curies, PhDs grants), have committed to analyze a wide dataset of Oil&Gas wells and seismic reflection data in order to characterize deep groundwater in terms of salinity, pressure and 3D distribution at regional scale, by applying a combination of well-established concepts from oil and gas exploration, reservoir engineering, geophysics, hydrogeology and marine geology.
The objective will be to: i) characterize the geometry, extension and volume of these potentially extensive deep fresh/low-salinity groundwater hosted in deep reservoirs; ii) explore implications, as an unconventional source of water, to the many other Mediterranean countries, of which coastal areas shared a common geological history; iii) run a feasibility study for the potential development of these deep water resources, evaluating how easily and at which costs the existing technology used in Oil & Gas exploration and production industry could be transferred.