More than two years after PetroNeft shares were suspended from trading on the junior stock markets in Dublin and London, it appears the well has truly run dry.
Following an extraordinary general meeting on August 8th, the death knell has been sounded for the Dublin-based, Russia-focused oil and gas explorer as it enters a members’ voluntary liquidation.
On a website appearing as old as the oil it traded in, PetroNeft announced that David Van Dessel of VanDessel-Reorg has been appointed as the liquidator of the firm.
The company has entered a solvent liquidation with assets that are understood to be in the low five figures. Key assets were sold to chief executive Pavel Tetyakov in a deal involving the assumption of associated debt in mid-2023, with the board having worked to dispose of its other assets.
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Founded in 2003 as PetroNeft LLC, the firm acquired Russian company Stimul-T, the rights to an oilfield in the Tomsk region in western Siberia, later acquiring further licence rights.
It was listed on the London AIM and Dublin ESM Markets in September 2006, as PetroNeft plc.
The liquidation is expected to be completed within a year, with the company unlikely to see the 20th anniversary of its public listing.
Influencers beware, Revenue is on the prowl
“The world today is rightly increasingly focus on a future with cleaner air, water and a fairer planet, and while your company can make no apologies over having the extraction of fossil fuels as its core business, we are determined to do what we can within the constraints of our business model to work towards that future,” said the company’s then non-executive director Alastair McBain in its most recent accounts in 2021.
He spoke of “renewed optimism”, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to the company’s auditors resigning and its output being hit with sanctions. Its share price plunged by more than 90 per cent following the invasion.
In the years since, the company has been slowly wound up with far less attention than it received during its glory years. PetroNeft, a once widely-covered and widely-backed company, has instead PetroLeft ... quietly.
