Companies: FPM   

Oil explorer Faroe Petroleum is raising £45 million at 147p as it clinches deals with Shell, BP and E.ON Ruhrgas.

The London-based company, which focuses on exploring the 'Atlantic Margin', the North Sea and Norway, says the money, raised through broker Panmure Gordon, will enable it to drill 26 wells by the end of 2009, farm into new prospects, speed up growth in Norway and complete the acquisition of certain development and production assets. At the same time, AIM-quoted Faroe has agreed to farm in with five per cent at the 'high-risk/high-reward' William licence in the Faroes, where BP has 50 per cent, Shell 20 per cent and Anadarko 25 per cent, and is taking ten per cent of both the Trym Norwegian licence (Shell 50 per cent) and the Granat Norwegian licence (Shell 70 per cent).

In addition, the company is giving half its 340 per cent of its Norwegian licence, PL 433, to Germany's E.ON Ruhrgas. In exchange, Faroe receives 4.83 per cent of the UK Schooner gas field holding an estimated 64 billion cubic feet of gas, 87.5 per cent of the UK Topaz gas field and ten per cent of Norway's Faroe exploration licence, PL 376.

Chief executive Graham Stewart trumpets that Faroe now has assets 'with a very substantial prize in excess of two billion barrels of oil equivalent... and now enjoy the position of the third-largest gross acreage holder in the Atlantic Margin'. Floated at 103.5p four years ago, Faroe shares, which hit 179.5p in 2006, now stand at 158p, up 4.5p today, and could prove a better bet than some sector peers.

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Faroe Petroleum	AIM	£59.72m	57.00p	-2.25p
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Other company articles:
North Sea cheer for Faroe			03/10/2008
Faroe raising £45 million			30/11/2007
Norway beckons Faroe			11/09/2006
Faroe hits dry well			09/06/2006
Faroe Petroleum waits on North Halibut			23/05/2006