The North Sea-focused Longboat Energy operation chaired by former Faroe Petroleum boss Graham Stewart has underlined its ambition to achieve rapid growth after succeeding in its effort to raise £10 million from investors.
The fund-raising will give Longboat the firepower to pursue acquisitions in the North Sea and pave the way to a stock market flotation for the firm.
Oil and gas heavyweight has 'unfinished business' in North Sea
Longboat expects its shares will be listed on the Aim Market from Thursday, November 28.
The company completed the fund-raising after Mr Stewart said he had unfinished business in the North Sea following the takeover of Aberdeen-based Faroe Petroleum by Norway’s DNO in January.
The takeover followed a hostile bid that valued Faroe at £640 million.
Faroe developed significant operations in the UK and Norway under Mr Stewart’s leadership.
Analysis - Fate of Scottish oil firm will cause concern in country
He formed Longboat with other former Faroe executives in the belief the conditions were ripe to build another big North Sea business through acquisitions.
The shake up in the area triggered by the crude price plunge from 2014 has resulted in assets being put up for sale at what some investors see as attractive prices. Mr Stewart reckons the Longboat team has the experience and connections to capitalise on opportunities.
When Longboat launched its fund-raising campaign earlier this month, he said the company was already in talks about potential deals and that former shareholders in Faroe Petroleum had provided encouragement for the new venture.
Longboat’s chief executive Helge Hammer said yesterday that the company had won the support of many large institutional investors including former long-term shareholders of Faroe Petroleum.“We believe that there is a unique opportunity at present to build a meaningful North Sea E&P (exploration and production) company on a relatively short time scale,” said Mr Hammer, who was Faroe’s chief operating officer.
Israeli oil firm underlines faith in North Sea after $2bn expansion move
He added: “Our geological expertise, technical understanding across the North Sea, and deep experience throughout the E&P life cycle mean Longboat Energy will be able to identify the right assets with potential to unlock significant value.”
The founding shareholders in Longboat provided £800,000 of the £10m raised, with the remainder coming from institutional investors.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here