Sydney residents protesting against Dart Energy drilling inside city limits. Dart has plans for up to twenty wells in the UK.
Dart Energy plans 22 unconventional new gas wells at its site in Airth, Scotland. Yet the company planning the UK’s biggest onshore gas development has many different owners with no single controlling interest. Dart’s main shareholders are a bunch of mining companies, banks, investment funds and wealthy individuals who invest in oil and gas.
The biggest is Krestlake Pty Ltd, which owns 14% of the company. Krestlake is a shell company (used for private dealings) of the ironically named New Hope Corporation, a coal mining company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Aside from Krestlake, all of Dart’s other shareholders own between 0.1 and 5% of the company. These include:
GEL/GPEL Ltd, a UK-based private developer of unconventional gas assets in the UK, Poland, Spain and the Ukraine.
Wealthy individuals such as Aberdeen-based Stanley Thomson Fraser & the Australian Hugo Charles Kearny.
An assortment of banks & investment banks including HSBC (who recently granted the Dart a $100m overdraft), JP Morgan, Citicorp, Merrill Lynch, and UBS. A group of lesser-known names such as New-Zealand based National Nominees Ltd are also investors as well as Wealth Management funds such as Australian Executor Trustees.
Dart’s directors also hold stakes in the company, owning some $67 million of shares (around 20% of the company’s value). These ‘unissued shares’ depend on the performance of the company in the future.
For a list of Dart’s main shareholders see p 103 of the company’s Annual Report. For directors shares, see p29.
