San Leon Energy PLC on Thursday said efforts had been made to thwart its acquisition of a controlling interest in Energy Link Infrastructure (Malta) Ltd, a move which it regarded as ‘both aggressive and vexatious in nature’.
San Leon is an oil and gas production company focused on Nigerian assets.
On Thursday, the company noted a petition made by Ocean Pearl Maritime SA to wind up its subsidiary San Leon ELI Ltd.
In October, San Leon proposed to acquire a further 13.5% of ELI’s shares from Ocean Pearl for $12 million, negotiated down from an initial price of $15 million.
Alongside San Leon’s other investments in ELI, the company said that this would grant it a majority stake in the energy exploration infrastructure company.
San Leon said: ‘It is self-evident that the acquisition from Ocean Pearl was conditional on completion of San Leon’s refinancing’.
San Leon is currently engaged in refinancing efforts. In March, the company said it received acceptable commercial terms from two prospective funders, and that negotiations were in their final stages.
San Leon added that the deal would require the consent of ELI’s senior lender, ‘as all shares in ELI are pledged to ELI’s senior lender’.
However, San Leon said that Ocean Pearl has made ‘no offer or representations’ to this end, and has instead lodged a petition to wind up San Leon ELI Ltd, the member of the San Leon group that contracted with Ocean Pearl.
San Leon described the petition as ‘both aggressive and vexatious in nature’.
However, it said that the petition ‘will have no bearing on the speed at which funding can be put in place and is arguably detrimental to Ocean Pearl’s own interests if prospective funding partners object to Ocean Pearl’s approach’.
The company has advised Ocean Pearl to withdraw the petition and work alongside San Leon toward completing the acquisition.
Should Ocean Pearl fail to do this, San Leon said it has ‘retained legal advisers to robustly defend and overturn the petition.’
Shares in San Leon remain suspended at 16.14 pence each in London on Thursday.
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