Imperial completes £300m fundraising

OIL company Imperial Energy today announced it has successfully raised more than £300m through a rights issue of shares.

Last month the Leeds-based group ditched a plan for debt financing because of the global credit crunch and said it had entered a share underwriting facility with Merrill Lynch and ABN AMRO’s Hoare Govett.

Imperial today said that 97.4% of the shares available through the one-for-one rights issue had been taken up at a discounted price of 600p each and Merrill Lynch and Hoare Govett had found subscribers to buy the remaining shares at 935p each raising a toal of £306.7m which will be used to pay off all its debt and fund its development and further exploration programmes.

Imperial’s share price closed at 962p last night, having been as high as 1389p in January.

While the credit crunch has squeezed companies of all sizes across the globe, the surging price of oil, which recently reached a record $135 a barrel, puts Imperial in a stronger position and has successfully seen it complete the rights issue after early doubts about its take-up.

Last month the Leeds-based company, founded by Yorkshire-born but Russian-based lawyer Peter Levine, said it remained on track to deliver its year-end production target of 25,000 barrels of oil per day.

In March Imperial said it had received approval from the Russian authorities to register substantial new oil reserves in west Siberia.