Oil and gas explorer Trinity Exploration & Production is hoping to raise £56million after its merger with fellow exploration firm Bayfield Energy Holdings.
Through its merger with AIM-listed Bayfield, expected mid-February, Trinidad-focused Trinity will become listed and the new company renamed Trinity Exploration & Production.
It then hopes to raise the cash, to be spent on exploration and development and general costs, through a new share placing.
Chairman and former Venture Production co-founder and chief executive Bruce Dingwall is due to become executive chairman of the merged company.
He said that, as Aberdeen-based Venture had been one of the independents to rejuvenate the North Sea with smaller, younger firms, he hoped Trinity would do the same in Trinidad, which had been dominated by four large operators for a number of decades.
“The reserves base is under-evaluated and underdeveloped. We are now the biggest independent and we are positioning ourselves to get to reserves we think are stranded.”
He said the firm would also be oil focused, rather than gas focused like the existing firms in the region.
The merged firm will have proved and probable reserves of 31million barrels of oil equivalent and expects to have production of 5,000 barrels of oil per day by the end of 2013 and more than 10,000 barrels per day in the “medium term” from existing fields and projects, said Trinity.
The firm’s chief executive will be based in Trinidad with a development office in Edinburgh. Mr Dingwall lives near the Angus/Perthshire border.