Gulf Keystone places discounted shares

15th Mar 2010 08:52

Shares in Kurdistan-focused oil and gas explorer Gulf Keystone fell back Monday morning after the company announced a discounted share placing.Gulf Keystone raised in the region of £16m through the placing of 20.92m shares at 76.5p. The mid-market share price of Gulf Keystone on the trading day before the announcement of the placing was 87.25p.The shares have been placed with new and existing institutional shareholders.The company said that further funding will be needed during the course of 2010 to finance its drilling programme in Kurdistan.'We are very pleased to be commencing the first stage of our drilling campaign which has the prospect of substantially furthering the Company's resource base. The capital raised today, together with our other financial facilities, allows us to begin our programme,' said Todd Kozel, chief executive of Gulf Keystone.On 10 March the company announced that it had agreed to pay $40m to the Kurdistan Regional Government and $12m to its erstwhile joint venture partner ETAMIC to take full control of Gulf Keystone Petroleum International.