Nido Petroleum starts share purchase plan

MANILA, Philippines - Australia’s Nido Petroleum Ltd., the project operator of the Galoc oil field in the Northwest Palawan basin, has started raising half of a targeted A$11-million capital.

“Nido is seeking to raise up to A$6 million under the share purchase plan (SPP) offer,” the company told the Australian bourse.

The transaction allows shareholders as of Nov. 27 to buy up to A$15,000 worth of new fully paid ordinary shares in Nido without paying brokerage or other transaction costs.

The offer, which forms part of an A$11.6-million fundraising plan through the stock market announced late last month, started yesterday and will end on Jan. 4.

“The proceeds from the SPP offer will be applied towards the company’s participation in the Galoc Phase 2 project, the Galoc North near-field exploration opportunity and West Linapacan A front-end engineering and design work,” it added.

In September, the consortium behind Galoc finalized a decision to pursue a $188-million expansion. The Galoc Phase 2 targets to more than double the output to 12,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) from 5,600 bopd.

The Galoc project is one of only two regularly-producing oil fields in the Philippines, which is relatively under-explored compared with its peers in Southeast Asia.

Nido will also use part of the proceeds for the engineering and design, and pre-final investment decision work program of the West Linapacan field in Northwest Palawan.

Nido, which holds a 22.88-percent share in the Galoc oil field or Service Contract (SC) 14 Block C1, earlier said it will spend $43 million as an equity portion for the expansion.

Other members of the consortium are Galoc Production Co. (26.84 percent), Oriental Petroleum and Minerals Corp. (7.79 percent); The Philodrill Corp. (7.21 percent) and UK firm Forum Energy Philippines Corp. (2.28 percent).