Funding deal for Victoria

02/04/2009 Robert Tyerman

Victoria Oil & Gas has arranged a £5 million equity facility with US group Yorkville Advisors and raised £675,000 at 3p.

The facility is a ‘Standby Equity Distribution Agreement’ (SEDA), under which AIM-quoted Victoria may draw funds at its discretion over the next two years in exchange for issuing shares to Yorkville, a £7 billion US fund management group that backs resource ventures. Victoria, chaired by entrepreneur Kevin Foo, says it will use the £5.75 million raised with the SEDA and placing to develop its 60 per cent-owned Logbaba gas and condensate field in Cameroon, West Africa.

The company, once an AIM star before falling out of bed, also owns 100 per cent of the West Medvezhye gas field in Siberia, with estimated potential resources equivalent to more than one billion barrels of oil. In addition, Victoria has lately been making legal headway over another asset, the Kemerkol oilfield project in Kazakhstan, where the general prosecutor has supported the company’s appeal against what Foo has described as a ‘fraudulent’ local challenge to its ownership.

Floated at 20p five years ago, Victoria shares hit 254.5p in 2006 before collapsing to 2.68p last month. They have now bounced to 4.2p, valuing the company at £18.8 million.

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