7th Nov 2018 15:30
LONDON (Alliance News) - Zenith Energy Ltd said Wednesday it has been admitted to trading on the Merkur Market of the Oslo Bors in Norway, having raised GBP668,300 in a private placement to satisfy admission requirements.
The Merkur is a multilateral trading facility owned and operated by the Oslo Bors, which Zenith believes is known to have an active debt financing market.
Zenith operates the largest onshore oilfield in Azerbaijan with an 80% participating interest in a 25-year rehabilitation, exploration, development and production sharing agreement with State Oil Co of the Azerbaijan Republic, which retains the remaining 20% interest.
The company believes listing on the Merkur will provide a "complementary platform" to its trading due to its "energy-focused institutional and retail investor base".
Norwegian equity markets, according to Zenith, have "long supported" production focused oil and gas companies such as Zenith whose primary objective is converting significant proven untapped reserves into production.
Zenith completed a private placement with Norwegian investors to satisfy admission requirements. Zenith raised gross proceeds of about GBP668,300 through the placement of 20.8 million shares at a price of about 3.2 pence each.
The private placement price of 3.2p represents a 12% discount to Zenith's closing price in London on November 5.
"I am pleased Zenith will be admitted to trading on the Merkur Market of the Oslo Bors. Norway is one of the world's most sophisticated equity and bond markets for energy companies and is well-known to present ample opportunities for value creation," said Andrea Cattaneo, chief executive officer.
He added: "The proceeds of the private placement will be used to accelerate the execution of our near-term Azerbaijan drilling programme whose results should progressively enable a material reappraisal of the company's market value."
Shares in Zenith Energy were down 1.4% Wednesday at 3.60 pence each.