Lekoil, a West Africa-focused oil and gas exploration and production company, announced that it has raised about $12.4m to bring Nigeria’s Otakikpo field into commercial production, Ecofin Agency reported.

The company raised the funds by placing 48.33m new ordinary shares to institutional and other investors, and completed the placing through an accelerated book-build, according to Proactive Investors. Lekoil’s CEO, Lekan Akinyanmi, said: “this placing, and our undrawn debt facility, gives us a cushion with which to bring Otakikpo into commercial production and to ramp the field up to our phase one target of 10,000b/d of oil.”

Lekoil is expected to begin commercial oil production from Otakikpo marginal field, located in Oil Mining Lease (OML) 11 in Rivers State during September, following the completion of the Otakikpo-003 well. Afterwards, it will continue to phase two of the Otakikpo field development plan which is to bring production to a target of 20,000b/d, depending on necessary approvals by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and joint venture partners.