Providence to fund drilling campaign with £41m share placing

Exploration company Providence Resources today announced the conditional placing of over 16m new ordinary shares which will raise around £41m (€48.69m) for the company.

In a statement, Providence said it was "pleased to announce... a conditional placing for cash of 16,096,800 new ordinary shares of €0.10 each... at 255p (€3.03) per share, raising gross proceeds of approximately £41.0m."

The company said the placing would be primarily used to finance development of the its offshore Ireland portfolio, with a multi-year, multi-well drilling campaign to cover the six basins in which the company has licence interests.

"This campaign will target up to 10 wells to be drilled from now through 2013," Providence said.

"The planned drilling programme not only represents the largest drilling programme in our history, but it will also be the largest co-ordinated multi-basin drilling programme ever carried out offshore Ireland," said Providence CEO Tony O'Reilly.

"With such a comprehensive programme, we look forward to the exciting results from the development of our asset base".

The placing is conditional upon shareholder approval, to be sought at an EGM be held on March 11, and admission of the new ordinary shares to trading on the London (AIM) and Dublin (ESM) exchanges.