The company, which will be valued at £33.3 million on arrival, has a portfolio of revenue-producing assets in Italy and Malta and intends to use the placing proceeds to expedite the development and exploitation of its properties.

Mediterranean has 100 per cent of the Ombrina Mare Concession off the Italian coast, which is estimated to hold 19.5 million barrels of ‘net contingent resources’ and 89 million barrels of stock tank oil. The company has interests in blocks four, five, six and seven offshore Malta, with an estimated 218 million barrels of net prospective oil resources, 20 per cent of the Guendalina gas find in the Adriatic and is in a joint venture with heavyweight groups ENI and Total Italia.

Lenigas, joint managing director of Asia Energy and on the boards of several other resource groups, is non-executive chairman of Mediterranean. The chief executive officer is Giovanni Catalano, a seasoned oil and gas man who was, until recently, far eastern business development manager at Australian group Woodside Energy.

Catalano argues Mediterranean Oil & Gas will be ‘something of a rarity on AIM, as it is already a producing, cash-generating production company’ and stresses the company’s desire to exploit its ‘substantial existing and potential oil reserves’.