Empyrean Energy, a London-based energy hopeful, is planning to raise £6 million on AIM at between 40p and 50p to earn a 52 per cent stake in the Glantal natural gas deposit in Saarbrucken, Germany, which the company says could hold between 1.2 and 6.2 trillion cubic feet of gas. Robert Tyerman reports.
Broker HB Corporate (previously Hoodless Brennan) is advising Empyrean, headed by former corporate financier Chris Lambert and Australian colleagues Mal James and Tom Kelly, on its AIM float, provisionally timed for next month. The company, which recently raised £1.2 million of ‘seed’ capital at 20p, wants the £6 million to do the work on Glantal that will earn it a majority stake in the project, whose other participants, all based in the USA, are Penonian, which will operate the project, Monaco Petroleum and the Hill Group.
Empyrean argues Glantal, which is close to an old site of coal drilling, would be economic at a gas price of $4.59 per thousand cubic feet, against a current market price of $5. Lambert and his colleagues point out that demand is rising in Germany, which has also set itself a 20-year deadline to phase out nuclear power, which now supplies 30 per cent of its domestic fuel needs.
The company intends to start drilling in August and should know soon afterwards whether Glantal does contain a commercial gas deposit after all. Until then, its appeal is speculative.
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