Publish Date : 31-Oct-2013
VC Bank has purchase a stake in a leading oil drilling company.
With offices in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE, and founded in 1991, Challenger presently owns and runs a fleet of 22 rigs in Libya offering drilling and work-over services of oil, gas and water wells.
Demonstrating VCBank's unconventional pursuit to lure North American and European funds and sources of capital to investment opportunities in the MENA region, the acquisition was jointly funded by VC Bank and its strategic technical partner GEM.
This significant deal was finalized by a team from VC Bank and GEM, not only reinforcing the successful alliance between the two companies, but also showing that the region has many attractive, yet obscured, investment prospects represented in private sector companies like Challenger that operates mainly in Libya.
Hassan Tatanaki, Challenger Limited Chairman, said : 'Amongst all the alternative financing routes available to the company, Challengers management has chosen to partner with VC Bank and GEM in order to fuel and expedite its capacity expansion plans and its geographical coverage. This was based on our utter confidence and belief in the investment model pursued by VC Bank and GEM and the clarity of the financing roadmap presented by them.'
He added : 'This transaction demonstrates that the growing cooperation among Libya, the US and the Middle East is creating an attractive investment environment for US and international financial institutions. "We are very happy that Challenger attracted foreign investments into Libya, especially from prominent institutions from the Middle East and the United States such as VC Bank and GEM. We are very proud of this partnership and believe that Challenger is just the starting point for many investments in different areas in Libya, including tourism, agri-business and, most importantly "value added" manufacturing and processing." Mr. Tatanaki added, "In the oil sector, with Libya in particular, oil production in the 1970s was more than 3 million barrels per day (bpd) compared to todays levels of 1.6 million bpd. Therefore, with proven estimated current reserves of 39.5 billion barrels of mainly sweet light crude, an aggressive plan has been introduced by the Libyan government to enhance oil production capabilities to levels close to those of the 70s by 2010. Libya hopes to return its output levels to close to three million barrels per day (bpd) by 2010, the highest since the prosperous 1970s. Since the lifting of sanctions, exploration concessions have been granted to international exploration companies, which hope to drill 50 exploration wells per year.'
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