Eco Atlantic Oil & Gas Ltd (LON:ECO) revealed that it has raised £8.46mln in new capital and added Africa Oil Corp to its shareholder register.
Africa Oil Corp, an explorer that’s seen significant recent success with new discoveries, has subscribed for a 19.77% stake in the company, taking 29.2mln new Eco shares priced at 29p.
READ: Eco Atlantic Oil & Gas advances drill plans offshore Namibia
The premium priced placing is pitched some 28% above Friday’s closing share price.
Cash raised in the funding will be earmarked for Eco’s exploration ventures, allowing the company to actively identify, negotiate and contract new oil and gas exploration assets and conduct the initial work programmes.
At the same time, Eco and AOC are entering a strategic alliance agreement to jointly bid on new assets and ventures. Also, AOC chief executive Keith Hill will join the Eco board as a non-executive director.
Eco CEO, Gil Holzman, described Africa Oil Corp as “a like-minded company with a similar philosophy” highlighting that the new shareholder and potential partner is focussed frontier regions and has “significant financial muscle” to deliver on its strategy.
“Eco is now in an incredibly strong financial position,” Holzman said.
READ: Eco Atlantic set to exploration catalysts as it brings Total into Guyana venture
“We are funded for our forthcoming work programmes in both Guyana and Namibia through a series of agreements with Tullow Oil, AziNam, and Total and through these new agreements with AOC; we now also have the capability, as well as an industry leading partner, to identify further assets and to accelerate the work programmes on them.
“AOC is also, through its shareholding, now intrinsically aligned with Eco to deliver this strategy."
He added: “This is a very exciting and busy time for Eco and we look forward to working with the AOC team to identify new projects to add to our portfolio whilst progressing our current assets in Guyana and Namibia together with our existing industry leading partners.”