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Oil and gas explorer Egdon Resources has finalised plans to spin off its gas storage business.

The company has today sent out proposals to shareholders. The plan it to list separate business Portland Gas on Aim. For every share in Egdon, investors will will get a new share in Portland Gas which will trade under the ticker PTG.

Planning application for the gas storage project, which will be located underneath the Isle of Portland, Dorset, was submitted to Dorset County Council in March. In an update this morning house broker Seymour Pierce said it believed consent will be granted in Q1 2008.

It will be a complicated engineering task to create huge storage chambers in a 400-meter thick thick salt deposit two kilometers beneath the Isle of Portland.

This will be linked to the national grid via a pipeline which is waiting on approval from the Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR), a decision on which is also due in Q1 2008, said Seymour Pierce. Egdon shares were unchanged at 224p.