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Former Glen Dimplex boss ups stake in Providence Resources
Sean O’Driscoll now holds 4.4 per cent of the shares in the oil and gas exploration company through his investment vehicle Roaring Waters
BARRY J WHYTE
JUNE 25, 2022

Sean O’Driscoll, the former chief executive of Glen Dimplex, has increased his stake in Providence, the Irish oil and gas exploration company. Picture: Feargal Ward
Sean O’Driscoll, the former chief executive of Glen Dimplex, has increased his holding in Providence Resources, the Irish oil and gas exploration company.
O’Driscoll, who holds the stake through his Roaring Waters investment vehicle along with his wife Rose O’Riordan, now holds 4.4 per cent of the shares in Providence, according to the latest filings.
That stake is made up of 47.2 million shares, which is currently worth €944,000 at the company’s current share price of just over 2 cent.
O’Driscoll increased his stake at the same time as Larry Goodman, the Irish beef baron, who has upped his position to 8.8 per cent. The company has yet to publish any filings to the stock exchange, though its website reflects Goodman’s new holding, which was first reported by The Currency website.
Goodman is now the third-biggest shareholder in the company, behind Kite Lake Capital Management, which holds 10.18 per cent, and the Furlong family, which holds 9.35 per cent through its Pageant Holdings vehicle and 3.31 per cent through its founder Nick Furlong. Merseyside Pension Fund holds 8.47 per cent.
M&G, the London-based investment fund, has in recent weeks sold down a portion of its shareholding in Providence. Stock exchange filings last week show that M&G now holds 8.20 per cent of the company’s shares. Prior to this, it had held 9.94 per cent.
Last week, Providence announced it had raised $1.8 million through the issue of placing securities and subscription securities from its existing shareholders, which will be used to help it develop its Barryroe oil field off the coast of Cork.
The company is waiting to receive a crucial licence from the government to allow it to begin drilling at Barryroe.

Article in The Currency by Tom Lyons
Larry Goodman raises his stake in Providence Resources

Billionaire beef baron Larry Goodman has upped his stake in the owner of the Barryroe oil field.

22nd Jun, 2022 - 2 min read

Tom Lyons
Chief Executive

Larry Goodman has increased his stake in exploration company Providence Resources to 8.8 per cent, a move that makes him the third biggest shareholder in the company.

London-based Kite Lake Investment Management owns 10.18 per cent while Pageant Investments, the investment vehicle of the Furlong family, controls 9.35 per cent. Nick Furlong also owns another 3.31 per cent of the company making the Irish family the largest single shareholder in the company.

Goodman owns his stake through Vevan Unlimited Company. The tycoon first bought into the company just below the 3 per cent disclosure threshold in April 2021. He later increased his stake after buying shares from M&G Investment Management and others.

Providence Resources recently raised $1.8 million through the issue of placing securities and subscription securities from its existing shareholders. Goodman took up his full position and may also have acquired other shares. The fundraising by Providence is to be used to fund the company as it seeks to develop its Barryroe oil field off the coast of Cork.

To drill the appraisal well, Providence needs to get sign off from the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications Eamon Ryan. However, the Green Party leader is, so far, refusing to do so. Providence chairman Jimmy Menton told The Currency in April: “You would prefer to convince any government and any minister that your case has merit. So the last thing you really want to be forced into is the situation where you look at your legal options.”

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar told The Currency last weekend he wasn’t sure how such a large project would be financed. “My understanding is that to get the renewal, part of the process is that you have the financial backing to actually do it,” he said. “These drills cost like a hundred million or something, and part of the condition of renewing a licence is that you are able to demonstrate that you have the financial wherewithal to make use of it and I think that may have been the issue.”

Goodman, one of Ireland’s wealthiest businesspeople, certainly has the money to do it. By increasing his stake in Providence Resources, he is certainly signalling he has not given up on a company which has been a rollercoaster ride for investors over the last decade.

Leo Varadkar interview with The Currency

Fields of oil
While eradicating fossil fuels from the energy supply is the goal, it is likely that Ireland will take a full generation if not longer transition to being fully powered by renewables.
In the very long meantime there is a pecking order for the fossil fuels being used to power the country. Varadkar sees natural gas as the transition fuel, and below that coal and oil.
But rumbling away in the south-west is a row over the development of Barryroe Oil Field, potentially one of the largest oil fields in Europe, off the coast of Co Cork.
Providence Resources, the oil exploration company, is claiming they have been held up for six months from moving forward with the opportunity there by Minister Eamon Ryan’s inaction on signing a renewal for their licence for a well appraisal.
But Varadkar, while being open that he may not know all the facts about Barryroe, brings a different perspective on the dispute which is later confirmed by his aide over the phone.
In order for the government to renew the licence for Barryroe, the entity must undergo an economic assessment, which is ongoing but due to conclude soon, and there is a question mark over whether Providence has the financial backing to move forward with the next stage of its appraisal.
“My understanding is that to get the renewal, part of the process is that you have the financial backing to actually do it,” Varadkar says.
“These drills cost like a hundred million or something, and part of the condition of renewing a licence is that you are able to demonstrate that you have the financial wherewithal to make use of it and I think that may have been the issue.”
In a statement released on Friday, the board of Providence said it was seeking to raise $1.8 million “for working capital needs, as well as to pursue its lease undertaking application for Barryroe”. The firm was offering a 16 per cent discount for investors on its closing price on Thursday evening.
Whether Providence gets the funding, and subsequently the licence, for now remains unknowable but it seems there is very little appetite in government buildings to look to new sources of oil as a panacea.

Those responsible for the dereliction of duty at the Central Bank and Financial Regulator escaped almost scot-free.
One wonders in the case of energy whether the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) was similarly asleep at the wheel. At a minimum the commission should be required by the relevant Dáil committee to explain what steps (if any) it had recommended to government to provide against energy supply now being in such a precarious position.
Our sole indigenous gas supply since the decommissioning of Kinsale is now the Corrib field off the north Mayo coast and it is expected to run down by the end of the decade. In 2019, the then taoiseach Leo Varadkar, overcome by a bout of candour for which he is famous, told the UN, without a government decision, that Ireland was banning offshore exploration. This put him and Ireland back on the side of the angels.
However, the Tánaiste must now contend with the demands of some large international companies for the continued provision of big data centres. Varadkar must now walk a tightrope since each of these data centres requires more power than a very large Irish town.
Varadkar’s UN actions earned him a warm welcome from the same politicians who, before their conversion, pressed me as energy minister a decade ago to establish a state oil company to explore offshore. In 50 years, Ireland has never had an oil find.
Experts suspect that the Barryroe oil and gas strike off the south-west coast may change that and could offer significant commercial finds. Barryroe was licensed before the ban on exploration and is awaiting the necessary permissions for further drilling to confirm if it is commercially viable. After the Corrib is exhausted, such an indigenous supply would ease the pressure.
The department is due to publish a major report on energy security that it commissioned before the Ukraine invasion was anticipated by anybody. Presumably, it will provide clarity on general policy direction and enable not just a decision on Barryroe, but also on the future of the proposed LNG terminal at Tarbert, in north Kerry.
New technologies at research stage, as well as a lessening of community resistance to sensible wind projects, may yet enable us to speed up the optimisation of renewables. In the interim, we must keep the cows milked and the lights on.

Pat Rabbitte: Questions for the utilities commission as energy crisis was waiting to happen
Even before the Ukraine invasion, it was clear to most that an energy squeeze was on the way. So why was nothing done about it?
PAT RABBITTE
00:00

Protesters at a pro-Ukrainian march in Frankfurt am Main in Germany: Our energy supply is on a knife edge, and not only because of the war in Ukraine. Picture: Getty
When the present government was formed, the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources was retitled the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. Energy was excised from the title. This was more than symbolic. Renewables appear to have become the sole focus of energy policy.
This is all very admirable, except it is not possible to transition to renewables without essential backup for when the wind doesn’t blow – and the cleanest backup is gas. By all means let us hasten the transition to renewables, but let us recall that last year we had the highest number of days without wind in the last decade. Better to have gas backup than be forced to buy diesel-driven emergency generation.
Last summer, I wrote a column in these pages to explain the risk of the state sleepwalking into an energy crisis. The emergency intervention last week by government to procure additional generation to prevent power outages this coming winter at a cost of €350 million highlights how acute the crisis has become.
A year later the reasons haven’t changed. The cumulative effect of a number of factors has left our energy supply on a knife-edge. They include the decommissioning of power stations, the voracious appetite of big data centres for energy, the end of the Kinsale gas field, the climate-proofing of energy activity and the new piety about a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility on the south-west coast.
The power stations are functioning again, but it is not enough. EirGrid estimates the shortfall at about 700 megawatts (MW). My allusion last year to “volatile geopolitics” did not anticipate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has driven energy security to the top of government agendas across Europe. The imperative to help Ukraine resist the brutal designs of Vladimir Putin is causing serious grief for governments heavily dependent on Russian gas in particular.
The fact that we do not import our gas directly from Russia does not insulate us from crippling price rises. Britain had an obligation under European law to give us proportionate access to gas supplies, but since Brexit we are dependent on a bilateral agreement – a concept with which the Boris Johnson government is unfamiliar.
How has all this crept up on us? It was a crisis waiting to happen before Putin’s depredations in Ukraine. The parties in power, Fianna Fáil and the Greens, at the time of the financial crash were almost destroyed at the subsequent election. The parties that went in to pick up the pieces, Fine Gael and Labour, were similarly devastated. Those resp

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