Oracle taps PLUS

19/02/2007 Robert Tyerman

As foreshadowed here last August, Pakistan coal venture Oracle Coalfields is seeking £1.2 million on PLUS.

Entrepreneurs Shahrukh Khan, 35, and Conrad Windham, 23, have launched their 5p-a-share offer, with backing from small company investor Bruce Rowan and St Helen’s Capital as adviser. Oracle’s stated aim is to explore and develop prospects in the Indus East coalfield in Pakistan’s Sindh province, with a 20 per cent local partner in the form of Sindh Koela, a company controlled by the influential Magsi family.

Banker’s son Khan, with experience of large infrastructure projects in China and elsewhere, is chairman and chief executive officer of Oracle, whose value at the subscription price is £3.7 million. The company claims its licence area holds an inferred resource of 365 million tonnes, of which two boreholes, KHW 1 and 2, sport a surer indicated resource of around 24 million tonnes. Oracle argues the area to the east of the licence has been assessed to contain an inferred one billion tonnes.

If the float succeeds, Khan’s stake in Oracle will fall from 60 per cent to 40.5 per cent. Windham, a former assistant to controversial share tipster Tom Winnifrith and now on the board of PLUS-quoted All-Star Minerals (with Beowulf Mining boss Bob Young) and other ventures, will have 13.5 per cent after the float, as will Rowan.

Oracle bases much of its investment case on the rapid growth of electricity demand in Pakistan and the likely inadequacy of present feedstock sources to satisfy it. The company says it intends to establish one or more mine-mouth power plants together with Sindh Koela with an aggregate capacity of 150 million megawatts.

Khan, Windham and Rowan also have six million warrants each and non-executive director Anthony Scutt, a Rowan associate, has two million. The issue has speculative promise for the strong-nerved.