Goodman makes move for appointment of examiner at Barryroe  

A rig at Barryroe

Businessman Larry Goodman has advanced his bid to to put Celtic Sea oil exploration firm Barryroe into examinership as part of a plan to rescue the company from collapse. The bid is set for a High Court hearing next week. 

Barryroe said in a statement that shareholder Vevan had applied to the High Court to secure the appointment of an examiner to the oil firm and that the hearing was set for July 31. 

Vevan is an investment company owned by Mr Goodman which had started to build a significant but minority stake in Barryroe in recent years.   

Barryroe adjourned plans for a shareholder meeting on Monday at the Dublin head offices of Davy, its company stockbroker, which it had called for shareholders to consider winding up the company. The latest move by Mr Goodman's investment firm may offer hope that Barryroe has some sort of future. 

The survival of the oil exploration firm has been in doubt for some time. It chief asset is the Barryroe oil and gas field, which lies off the coast of Cork, and has had a roller-coaster rise since first revealing in 2012, as the country struggled to recover from the financial collapse, that the field was more valuable than it had once thought.   

The company was called Providence Resources until the departure of chief executive Tony O'Reilly Jnr in early 2020. His departure ended the O'Reilly family's last link with the exploration firm. The name change was formally made last September.  

Barryroe also revealed last year a dispute with the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications which believed the company had failed to show it had the sufficient funds to advance development of the field. 

The oil firm last month said that the dispute involved correspondence with Minister Eamon Ryan and the department over what it claimed to be the minister querying the "financial capability" of the company to develop the field despite it saying it had €40m in finance "sufficient to fully cover the costs of the proposed appraisal programme" for the field.  

"In consequence the country has lost an opportunity to improve Ireland's energy security, to reduce the emissions associated with importing oil and gas, to provide employment and future tax revenues and to diversify the country's sources of primary energy supply. All at no cost to the public purse," the company claimed in a stock market release.  

Mr Goodman's Vevan had built a stake in the oil firm of 19.8% in April. 

But Barryroe said last month that it had around three weeks left in working capital of €176,000 (£152,000). "As previously highlighted the company is engaging in discussions with its substantial shareholders in relation to potentially funding the company going forward," it said in a stock market statement at the time. "There can be no guarantee that these discussions will be successful such that additional funding will be secured in the near future. If funding is not secured in the short term one of the options being considered by the Board is an orderly wind down of the company in a process of Creditor Voluntary Liquidation," it had said.