Petroneft raises $43m

Russia-focused oil and gas explorer and producer Petroneft Resources is raising $43m from a placing at 43p per share in order to finance the development of its Russian interests. The cash will be used to accelerate exploration and business development at its licences 61 and 67 at Tomsk Oblast in Russia. Petroneft holds 100% of licence 61 and 50% of licence 67. The plan is to more than double existing 2P reserves through the exploration programme. The placing was "substantially oversubscribed". The placing is in two tranches because Petroneft needs shareholder approval to issue some of the shares. Non-executive director Gerry Fagan is buying 200,000 shares in the placing. He did not own any shares prior to this investment. AIM-quoted Petroneft is on course to achieve a year end production target of 4,000 bopd and to treble this by the end of 2012. Petroneft is also looking at other opportunities in Russia.