Oslo Places Gas Firms on Watch

Oslo stock exchange (OSE) said October 1 it has put six of its listed firms – Sequa Petroleum, Green Dragon Gas, Fred Olsen Energy, Emas Offshore, Avocet Mining, and Storm Real Estate – under 'special observation'.

Sequa and Green Dragon are upstream gas producers with assets in respectively Kazakhstan (which expired July 2018) and onshore China. 

OSE told NGW that Sequa has been kept under special observation because it did not publish its 1H 2017 report as required by August 31 2017. OSE said it has therefore decided to keep bonds issued by Sequa on special observation, something it first did in January 2018. Sequa is registered in London and the Netherlands.

Regarding Green Dragon Gas, OSE notes that the trustees for its bond issue, Nordic Trustee, said that bonds had not been repaid by the maturity date of November 20, 2017. "Until there is further clarification of the situation, the price quotation will be subject to special observation," OSE told NGW. Green Dragon this year changed its name to G3 Exploration.

OSE says that special observation is a measure used under circumstances that may make the valuation of the security in question particularly uncertain: "The fact that a security is placed under special observation does not in itself impose any restrictions on trading, but it serves to notify market participants that there is some particular uncertainty over the pricing of the security. Special observation can, in contrast to a matching halt, be applied for a longer period."