Gujarat NRE Mineral Resources to issue bonus shares to Non – Promoters
Ahmedabad, 8th August, 2009. The Board of Directors of Gujarat NRE Mineral Resources Limited (GNMRL), an associate of Gujarat NRE Coke Limited, (GNCL) recommended issue of bonus shares in the ratio of one equity share for every existing one equity share held. In an unprecedented move, the Promoters of the Company have decided to waive their entitlement of Bonus shares in larger interests of the Company and its shareholders. That is, the bonus shares would be allotted only to Non-Promoter shareholders. The board also recommended a dividend of 5% on equity shares.
Earlier Gujarat NRE group had merged its eight group companies into GNMRL. Consequently, GNMRL has gained control over 34% equity capital of GNCL. Gujarat NRE Coke Limited is largest non-captive manufacturer of Low Ash Metallurgical Coke (LAMC) in India and also enjoys uninterrupted supply of raw material upon its acquisition of coking coal mines in Australia. Hence, the merger immensely benefits GNMRL in long term run as the LAMC market gradually starts improving thereby boosting the GNCL’s stakeholder’s wealth.
GNMRL has also got interests in oil & gas sector with the acquisition, through its wholly owned Australian subsidiary, 90% interest in two onshore exploration blocks namely EP457 & EP458 covering an area of 10600 Sq. KM. in the highly prospective onshore Canning Basin, Western Australia.
We, at GNMRL look ahead to put our confident step forward when exploring for petroleum in this vast acreage area and in this process understand the need of meticulous planning in order to ensure safety and prosperity to its shareholders investments. The Company in a strategic development has reprocessed more than 1800 line kms of 2D seismic data for both the aforesaid exploration blocks as part of its “Phase I” exploration program
The company has hired a highly experienced team of India based petroleum exploration consultants and experts who are analysing the data to achieve desired result. The team has already developed a fairly good idea of the subsurface geology of the whole area with the help of reprocessing and interpretation done and have identified few oil rich reefs and structural traps which could be targeted by the company pursuant to correlation and final analysis of the interpreted 2D seismic data by the experts. The whole operation is supervised and closely monitored by GNMRL team of experienced geoscientists.
The expected exploration tenure of 6 years has been fixed, which is divided into two phases namely ‘Phase1’ consisting first 2 years and the ‘Phase II’ consisting of balance 4 years.
Shri Arun Kumar Jagatramka, Managing Director of the company said “The progress of the Company on its oil & gas project in Western Australia is satisfactory and running as per schedule. As of today we have almost completed our “Phase 1” commitment with many fruitful and optimistic outcomes which are waiting to be validated through our next stage of exploration program in “PhaseII”. In the next phase, the outcomes obtained so far would be confirmed by advanced techniques like 3D seismic survey and locations for drilling would be henceforth finalized.”
Shri Arun Kumar Jagatramka further added that the management based on the results of geological data processing received so far as part of “Phase 1” was quite confident of success in its endeavor and as such the company would be listed sometime in 2010/11 to coincide with announcement of such successful results.