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Wessex Exploration

  • BY: Andrew Hore |
  • POSTED: 28/10/2010 |

Plus-quoted Wessex Exploration plans to raise up to £1.875m from a placing and open offer prior to a proposed move to Aim.

The shares are being offered at 2.5p each and the costs of the fundraising will be around £100,000. Shareholders can subscribe for as many shares as they want to in the open offer but if it is oversubscribed they will be scaled back.

Some of the cash will pay the expenses of the flotation on Aim. The rest will be spent on Wessex’s contribution to drilling offshore of Guyane early in 2011 and onshore exploration in the south of England.

Wessex’s main interest is 1.25% of a licence area offshore of Guyane (French Guiana) in Africa, which it holds via a 50% stake in Northpet Investments Ltd, the owner of 2.5% of the licence area. Tullow is the operator of the Guyane Maritime licence and Shell and Total have also acquired stakes of 33% and 25% respectively.

In southern England, Wessex has a 50% stake in PEDL238, which is just north of the Wytch Farm discovery in Devon, a 30% interest in the PEDL089 licence in Hampshire and 25% of the PEDL239 licence on the Isle of Wight.

There was a cash outflow from operations and investing activities of £905,000 in the year to June 2010. There was £313,000 left in the bank.

Wessex floated on Plus-quoted on 15 December 2009 but it has been in existence for a decade. The expected start price for trading in the shares after the introduction was 1.75p a share and the shares closed the first day’s trading at 2.12p a share.

The Wessex board includes non-executive chairman David Bramhill, a founder of a number of mining and oil businesses quoted on Aim including Nighthawk Energy, managing director Frederik Dekker, a former consultant for Tullow Oil subsidiary Hardman Resources, and former Durlacher and Daniel Stewart oil analyst Tim Heeley.

WH Ireland is the proposed nominated adviser and broker to Wessex.

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