More unwelcome news at Oisin Fanning’s San Leon, which has for the past year been beavering away in its effort to raise the money necessary to begin exploitation of a significant oil find in Nigeria.
Chief financial officer Julian Tedder has left the company which is unlikely to be welcome news for Mr Fanning as he attempts to consummate a major fundraising deal that has so far remained tantalisingly unfulfilled.
Mr Tedder’s departure comes at an unhelpful time, especially given his 20 years of senior management experience in the oil and gas sector, including with companies such as IGas Energy and Tullow Oil.
In a statement to the Irish Independent, the company said it could “confirm that CFO Julian Tedder has resigned and we have appointed someone else”.
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A spokesperson for the company said it wasn’t yet in a position to state who that new chief financial officer is, but that it would “update shareholders in due course”.
San Leon was, until recently, listed on the London stock exchange’s AIM Market, through which it gave regular updates on its efforts to raise funds to execute on a major corporate transaction that would help it acquire a stake in an entity called Energy Link Infrastructure (Malta). Energy Link is building a pipeline to an oil exploration prospect in Nigeria called OML 18, in which San Leon also has an indirect stake.
It’s been something of an ongoing saga, with a number of previous efforts falling short in the past year. In October 2023 the company announced it had struck a $187 million (€169 million) financing arrangement with a New York investment firm called Tri Ri Asset Management (Tram) but the funds for that were delayed and eventually the arrangement seemed to fall by the wayside.
Though San Leon assured the markets it had been told the funds were to be transferred by January 2024, it disclosed – with evident frustration – that “no funds have been received by the company”.
By March it seemed to have struck two possible deals with prospective funders, with one clearly the more advanced – the company said it was in the final stages of negotiation with financing expected by the end of that month.
In June there was new and apparently different news. The company had come to a deal with another, unnamed, funder that was prepared to make it the “beneficiary of a €500 million German government bond” which it could use as security on a loan from a third party. Again, it seemed confident the funds would be imminently available, stating at the time that it would have them by the end of the month.
But it hit some snags with the regulatory requirements of the stock exchange to file annual returns and quarterly financials, and so it had its listing first suspended and then cancelled.
As such the company isn’t obliged to give as much information about its activities any more, but it has been keeping investors up to date about the funding situation. Cantillon understands the talks are ongoing, but a spokesperson for the company could not comment when contacted last week.
San Leon’s shareholders will be hoping for more positive news soon.
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