Colombian private equity group TribeCapital Partners is to invest $25 million (£12.5 million) into bombed-out PetroLatina Energy.

The AIM-quoted company (formerly Taghmen Energy) says TribeCapital has agreed to invest the money, at an undisclosed premium to its depressed share price, to help develop PetroLatina’s oil exploration and producing assets in Colombia. Executive chairman Greg Smith says the investment, which is subject to due diligence and other conditions, will ‘enable PetroLatina to enter the second phase of its development programme in Colombia and increase cash flow dramatically’.

The company’s primary interests are 40 per cent and 20 per cent respectively in the Los Angeles and Santa Lucia fields on Colombia’s Tsquirama licence and 100 per cent of another field, Dona Maria, which together produced 450 barrels a day in the first half of last year. PetroLatina has majority interests in two exploration locks and owns the Rio Zulia-Ayacucho crude oil pipeline in the ‘prolific’ Catatumbo Basin.

Shares in PetroLatina, plunged all the way from 70.5p in 2005 to 5.75p earlier this month. They have now bounced to 8.5p, valuing the company at £9.9 million.

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PetroLatina Energy	AIM	£8.34m	19.00p	0.00p
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