Bahamas Petroleum Company Plc (“Bahamas Petroleum”), the AIM listed company with a circa £14 million market cap, has appointed Shore Capital as Joint Broker to the Company, with immediate effect, in conjunction with a $3.25 million placing.

Overview of the Company

Bahamas Petroleum is an oil and gas exploration company with 100% owned offshore licences exclusively focused on the Commonwealth of The Bahamas. The Company has significant prospective resources, which have been de-risked through both extensive 2D and 3D seismic.

The Company currently has five exploration licences for oil exploration covering approximately 16,000 km2 (4 million acres) in the territorial waters and maritime Exclusive Economic Zone of The Bahamas. The five exploration licences, referred to as Bain, Cooper, Donaldson, Eneas (these four licences together referred to as the Southern Licences) and Miami are held through wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Company, and were initially awarded on April 26, 2007 for a period of twelve years, with renewal nominally every three years. Subsequently, the Company received a number of extensions on the initial three-year term of each of the licences such that the second term for the Southern Licences commenced on the 8 June 2015.

The four Southern Licences  run until 2Q 2018 when the licences may be renewed a further two times. The Company is intent on delivering safe and environmentally responsible exploration.

It has been and remains the Company’s strategy to secure a “farm-in”, whereby another entity (ideally, but not necessarily, a major or large independent international oil and gas company) will acquire an interest in the Southern Licences, and in exchange will pay for all or a substantial part of the cost of drilling, and also reimburse the Company a proportion of the past costs incurred by the Company on those Southern Licences. This is a fairly typical structure for financing in the oil and gas industry.

The current proposed location of the first exploration well is in the Cooper – Donaldson licensed area, approximately 80 miles from Andros Island and 25 miles from the nearest Cuban islands. Ultimately the final well cost is highly dependent on spread rate, which includes rig rate and all support costs, but given recent developments in the global rig market is anticipated to be in the range of $60 million to $80 million. If commercial quantities are indicated from the exploratory well then the Company would proceed to the appraisal drilling phase thereafter.

Shore Capital service team is as follows:

Corporate Finance: Mark Percy / Toby Gibbs / Connor Williams

Research: Craig Howie

Sales Champion: Jerry Keen

For further information on the Company please see the Company’s website