The Perth-based company yesterday said its fully underwritten, non-renounceable rights issue would close on July 28 and that it had scheduled a shareholders’ meeting to approve the NorAsian takeover for August 18.

Ottoman also said it had now completed due diligence on its proposed acquisition of NorAsian.

Late last year, Ottoman and its overseas joint venture partners – AustralAsian and RGA Resources – merged their Filipino petroleum assets to create NorAsian Energy. Last month, Ottoman announced it was acquiring the 50% shareholding in NorAsian it did not already own.

NorAsian currently holds 15,000 square kilometres of acreage comprising a 100% interest in SC50 (Calauit oil field), an 80% interest in SC51 (offshore Cebu) and an 85% interest in SC55 (Palawan ultra deepwater), the largest publicly owned acreage offshore the Philippines.

Ottoman further said that NorAsian had received another payment from Canadian company Vital Resources, taking total payment to $US685,000 ($A913,500) under the recent farm-out agreement.

Last month, NorAsian entered into a farm-out agreement of 30% of its interests in SC50, SC51 and SC55 to Canadian-based Bentley International Oil. Vital Resources subsequently announced a 100% acquisition of Bentley’s interest in the farm-out.

“The receipt of payments highlights Vital’s strong commitment to the projects,” Ottoman managing director Jaap Poll said yesterday.

Vital’s acquisition also created opportunities for Ottoman management to increase its capacity to source funds from international markets through its publicly listed structure.

Vital had engaged Chapman Petroleum Engineering to calculate the Calauit-1B reserves, which Chapman estimated at 54.665 million barrels of oil in-place, of which 8.91MMbbl were was recoverable (on a proved, probable and possible basis).