Xtract Regulatory News (XTR)

16 Nov 2006 17:33

Cambrian Mining PLC16 November 2006 CAMBRIAN MINING PLC ("Cambrian" or "the Company") Participation in Xtract Energy Plc ('Xtract') Placing Sale of shares in Cambrian Oil & Gas Plc ("COIL") Placing Cambrian Mining plc ("Cambrian") through its wholly owned subsidiary CambrianInvestment Holdings Ltd ("CIH") currently holds 192,942,500 ordinary shares inXtract, representing approximately 54 per cent. of the current issued sharecapital of Xtract. Xtract has placed 109,795,800 million new ordinary shares of 0.1 pence each (the"Placing Shares") at 5.5 pence per ordinary share through its broker W.H.Ireland Limited, raising £6,038,769 before expenses (the "Placing"). Following the completion of the Placing there will be 467,105,600 ordinaryshares in Xtract in issue. As part of the Placing, Cambrian subscribed for 9,795,800 new ordinary shares.In addition, CIH converted its loan notes of £3,361,231 into ordinary shares ofXtract at the Placing price. Following the Placing and the conversion of theloan notes, Cambrian together with CIH will hold in aggregate 263,851,591ordinary shares in Xtract (representing approximately 50.0 per cent. of Xtract'senlarged issued share capital). Agreement to sell shares in COIL Cambrian has agreed to sell to Xtract Energy Plc 53,333,333 ordinary shares(together with the same number of warrants exercisable at a price of 3p pershare) in COIL, the consideration for which will be the issue to Cambrian of29,090,909 new Xtract ordinary shares. Following completion of these transactions Cambrian and CIH together will hold292,942,500 Xtract ordinary shares representing approximately 52.6 per cent. ofXtract's enlarged issued share capital. - Ends - For further information contact: Cambrian Mining Plc +44 20 7409 0890Alwyn Davey / John Byrne Parkgreen Communications +44 20 7493 3713Cathy Malins / Annabel Leather About Xtract Energy Plc Xtract's prime assets are its interest in shale oil deposits at Julia Creek inQueensland, Australia and a joint venture with the Australian research group,CSIRO, to develop a process for extracting oil from shale deposits. The initialvalidation tests, comprising small scale batch extractions of oil from theshale, have demonstrated that recovery from Xtract's Julia Creek shales inQueensland, Australia, would be in the order of 150 litres of light crude oilper tonne of shale. Earlier conventional retorting experiments indicated thatthe conversion of kerogen to oil yielded about 74 litres of oil per ton ofshale. Applying this rate of yield increase to the yields of 50 - 65 litres per tonneused earlier this year in Xtract's AIM admission document in relation to certainof Xtract's Julia Creek leases results in estimated in-situ shale oil resourcesof over 1.6 billion barrels of oil. Other energy assets held by Xtract are: • approximately 52.6% of Cambrian Oil and Gas Plc ("COIL") which is developing oil and gas assets in the Kyrgyz Republic (this will be the holding following the completion of the purchase of the further Coil shares as described above). COIL has acquired 25% of the issued share capital of ASX listed Methanol Australia Ltd ("MEO"). MEO is focused on developing a gas-to-liquids project in the Timor Sea, approximately 275 km northwest of Darwin, Australia, in an area known as Tassie Shoal. It has secured Australian Commonwealth Government environmental approvals for two large scale (1.8 mtpa) methanol plants (50% interest) and a 3 mtpa LNG plant (100%), which is the only new Australia LNG project to receive its Commonwealth Government environmental approvals. • approximately 19.1% of Wasabi Energy Limited which has rights to the Kallina power technology, uranium exploration interests in the Northern Territory, Australia, interests in the newly-formed Evolution Energy joint venture to produce bio-diesel fuel in Australia and in a coal deposit in Canada; • approximately 18.2% of Aviva Corporation Limited with promising thermal coal deposits in the mid-west of Western Australia. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange