L&M Group managing director Greg Hogan confirmed to PetroleumNews.net this morning that its subsidiary, L&M Petroleum, planned to offer 100 million shares, priced at 20c each, and to list on the ASX and NZX within the month.

The company is using brokers McDouall Stuart Securities for New Zealand, and Intersuisse Corporate for Australia.

Hogan said L&M Petroleum had held a 54% interest in L&M Oil (NZ), which listed in 1969 but was unsuccessful in its offshore and onshore Taranaki exploration. It delisted once the government refused to renew exploration licences after the oil shocks of the 1970s.

Earlier this month, L&M Petroleum managing director John Bay told PNN that the company and government-owned Mighty River Power were to jointly explore L&M Petroleum's Waiau licence PEP 38226. He said his company's previous exploration work in the 1123 square kilometre permit had identified seven exploration prospects and five leads.

In June, L&M Petroleum announced it had recovered small quantities of gas and traces of oil from the target Beaumont Formation reservoir sands at its initial Sharpridge Creek-1 well.

Bay said these encouraging results, together with active oil and gas seeps in the permit, confirmed the existence of an active petroleum system in the Waiau Basin.

L&M Petroleum plans to spud its second Beaumont Formation, in the Eastern Bush Prospect, in March or April next year, in conjunction with MRP.

In the southern South Island, L&M Petroleum has four onshore permits covering nearly all of the Te Anau and Waiau Basins, and a 4450sq.km offshore permit covering the Waitutu and Solander Basins. It hopes to drill up to nine prospects within the next two years.

Other divisions of the L&M Group own several coal seam methane and lignite (brown coal) exploration permits in the South Island.