Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited ("COPL), an international oil and gas exploration and development company focused on sub-Sahara Africa, announces that:
The Company has paid US$8 million (the “Funds”) to Atomic Oil & Gas LLC (“Atomic”) as the second payment to Atomic pursuant to the Company’s acquisition of Atomic as disclosed in the Company’s announcement on December 16, 2020. The Funds will secure the purchase of 15% of Atomic’s working interest in all of Atomic’s leasehold interests. In the event of non-completion, COPL would retain this interest.
COPL has closed a follow-on non-brokered private placement to raise additional gross proceeds of £3,000,000 (the “Subsequent Fundraise”) subsequent to the £6,000,000 placing announced by the Company on December 30, 2020 (the “Fundraise” together with the Subsequent Fundraise being the “Placing”). The Subsequent Fundraise of Units with institutional investors and high net worth private investors was completed on the same terms as the Fundraise outlined in the Company’s announcement of December 30, 2020. The total gross proceeds of the non-brokered private placement of Units under the Placing is £9,000,000 (US$12,200,000).
The net proceeds from the Placing will be used for the acquisition of Atomic as announced by the Company on December 16, 2020, other expenditures related to the Atomic acquisition, and for general corporate purposes.
Following the Placing, and including the common shares issued pursuant to the finder’s fees, the Company will have a total of 9,657,246,472 Common Shares issued and outstanding. There are no Common Shares held in treasury and therefore the total number of voting rights in the Company is 9,657,246,472. This figure may be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the Financial Conduct Authority's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.
Arthur Millholland, President and CEO, commented: "The $8 million payment to Atomic announced today is the first milestone achieved to complete the overall acquisition. The quality of the assets we will acquire under the Atomic acquisition speaks volumes to our ability to access the equity markets and to fully conclude the Placing entered into during the difficult Holiday period.”
Ryan Gaffney, CFO, added: “The closing of both portions of the Placing will allow the Company to progress the Atomic acquisition. COPL’s access to the equity markets has provided much confidence to debt investors with whom we are in discussions with to provide the balance of funds required to complete the transaction. We are targeting the receipt of binding Term Sheets from the targeted investors in the near term thus allowing COPL to progress to completion.”