14th Mar 2005 08:00
Afren PLC14 March 2005 AFREN PLC ANNOUNCES ADMISSION TO AIM & COMPLETION OF £8 MILLION PLACING Afren PLC ("Afren" or the "Company") an independent oil and gas exploration andproduction company, announces that its Ordinary Shares are due to start tradingon AIM today and that it has concurrently placed, at a price of 20 pence pershare, 40 million new Ordinary Shares to raise approximately £8 million (beforeexpenses) . The Company's market capitalisation at the placing price will beapproximately £25.9 million. Canaccord Capital (Europe) Limited is the Company'sNominated Adviser and Broker. The Company was formed in 2004 by a group of oil and gas professionals withsignificant experience in the African oil and gas sector to establish Afren as aleading oil and gas group within Africa. The Company is led by Guido Pas, actingChairman, Bert Cooper, executive director, Egbert Imomoh, executive director andformer Deputy MD of Shell Nigeria, and supported by non-executive directorsincluding Dr. Rilwanu Lukman, the former Secretary General of OPEC. FollowingAdmission, the Company's directors will hold between them 12.81 per cent. ofAfren. The Company is also being supported by the IFC (International FinanceCorporation) of the World Bank Group, and by Samuel Dossou, a former boardChairman of OPEC, and one of the leading African investors in quoted oil and gascompanies. Afren has been created to build initially through acquisition a leadingexploration and production company within the African oil and gas sector. Therationale of the Company is to establish Afren as the leading oil and gascompany in Africa, through the leveraging of key strategic relationships andlocal expertise, which will highlight exploration and production opportunitiesin the Gulf of Guinea region. Afren's ambition is to build a business ofsignificant value in the near to medium term. Afren's strategic objectives will ensure that the Company will offershareholders a diversified and balanced portfolio of attractive exploration,development and production asset opportunities. The Company has already agreed terms for its first asset opportunity which itexpects to complete shortly after Admission: the participation in an effective4.41 per cent interest in 'Block 1' of the Nigeria - Sao Tome & Principe JointDevelopment Zone. 'Block 1' has been identified by an independent oil and gasexploration consultancy as a proven hydrocarbon area which has relevantcharacteristics to other existing discoveries in adjacent Nigerian territory,where exploration success has been better than 50 per cent. Bert Cooper, Executive Director of Afren PLC commented: "We are delighted that the Company's shares will shortly commence trading onAIM. We believe we have brought together one of the most experienced oil and gasteams within Africa which, combined with an excellent first asset opportunity,positions Afren to become a leading pan-African oil and gas exploration andproduction company." 14 March 2005 For further information, please contact: Pelham Public RelationsJames Henderson [email protected] +44 020 7743 6673Charles Vivian [email protected] +44 020 77436672 Editors' Notes 1. Management interests The interests of the Directors, in the share capital of the company at the dateof this document all of which are beneficial, and following the Placing are: Name Ordinary SharesGuido Pas 4,512,500Ethelbert Cooper 3,129,328Egbert Imomoh 664,385Dr Rilwanu Lukman 7,437,500Osman Shahenshah 875,001 2. Management Team Biographical details of the Directors are as follows: Guido Pas (Non-executive Director and acting Chairman) Mr. Pas is an international executive with a background in senior financial andinvestment management roles relating to African natural resources. Following anearly career as a commodity and trade finance officer at Chase Manhattan Bank,Mr. Pas was a founding partner of the Addax and Oryx Group, one of the premierinternational petroleum marketing and producing companies operating in Africa.He has participated in the development of several listed mining companiesfocused on Africa and the former Soviet republics, including SAMAX Resources andOXUS Resources. Currently, Mr. Pas is Chairman and CEO of Mano River Resources,a dual listed (TSXV/AIM) gold and diamond exploration company, which is activein Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. He is also manages Synergy Resources Fund,an unlisted fund investing in mineral resources, and Vector XXI Finance, aGeneva-based investment advisory company. Ethelbert Julius Llewellyn Cooper (Executive Director) Mr. Cooper, a Liberian national, has been active in the African naturalresources sector for over 25 years. During the 1980s he devised and led aninitiative to restructure what, at the time, was Liberia's biggest industrialproject - an iron ore mining company with capital investment of over US$600million. At one time the company in question was Africa's largest stand-aloneproducer of iron ore. Mr. Cooper implemented the sequential and structured buyouts of Bethlehem SteelCorporation's and Granges International Mining's (an affiliate of AB Electrolux)interests in the project and, in the process, formed Liberia's miningparastatal, LIMINCO. Prior to the outbreak of civil war in Liberia LIMINCO'smanagement, marketing and financing needs were contracted to Mr. Cooper'scompanies. With a keen interest in oil and gas over the years, and with past andpresent involvement in the marketing of petroleum products, Mr. Cooper hasteamed up with Dr. Lukman to form Afren. Egbert Imomoh (Executive Director) Mr. Imomoh, a Nigerian national, has had 35 years' experience with the Shellgroup of companies, primarily in West Africa. Recently, Mr. Imomoh served asDeputy Managing Director of Shell Petroleum Development Company (Nigeria) ("SPDC"), one of the Shell group's largest operating companies, which is responsiblefor operating a joint venture that produces approximately 1 million barrels ofoil per day. Trained in Mechanical and Petroleum Engineering, Mr. Imomoh hasheld a wide variety of senior positions throughout the Shell group from ChiefPetroleum Engineer in SPDC to Technical and Planning Manager to Deputy MD ofSPDC. Dr Rilwanu Lukman (Non-executive Director) Dr. Lukman is an internationally known and respected figure in the oil and gasindustry. He has more than 40 years experience in the industry and hasrelationships at the most senior levels of the industry around the world. Someof Dr. Lukman's key appointments have included: Secretary General of OPEC (5terms); President of OPEC (9 sessions); Nigerian Minister of PetroleumResources; Special Advisor to the Nigerian President for Oil and Gas; NigerianMinister of Foreign Affairs; Nigerian Minister of Mines, Nigerian Minister ofPower and Steel; and Founder and Chairman of the African Petroleum ProducersAssociation. Dr. Lukman is a non-executive director of Afren and has beeninstrumental in helping Afren develop its asset acquisition strategy. Osman Shahenshah (Non-executive Director) Mr. Shahenshah has 16 years of international financial experience in privateequity, project and structured finance, capital markets and developing andimplementing public and private sector projects worldwide in energy,infrastructure, telecommunications and the process industries, with a primaryfocus on oil and gas. His international career includes senior positions in theoil and gas groups of IFC and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, and in theinvestment banking group of Mediocredito Centrale. He is currently head of theLondon office of Taylor-DeJongh, a leading independent oil and gas finance firm.Mr. Shahenshah has been actively involved in the African oil and gas sector formore than 15 years, with companies such as Shell, Chevron, Total, Agip, NNPC,and IFC. Mr. Shahenshah has a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania andMaster's degree from Columbia University. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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