In a Boardroomradio interview, Shaw flagged the likelihood of remaining as managing director if Beach decided to sell its 19.3% stake in Great Artesian to Sydney-based Drillsearch Energy.

“One of the key elements of that divestment would be that if Beach were no longer a substantial shareholder of Great Artesian, they would then no longer have any interest in the composition of our board,” he said.

“And I think one of the things they [the board] would like to see, is if there was a divestment by Beach, that I would continue on as managing director into the future.”

Just before Christmas, Drillsearch announced it had entered a call option with Beach to acquire all of its 29 million ordinary share investment in Great Artesian.

Drillsearch has offered to pay 51c per share – almost a 100% premium to the then 26c GOG share price – but just one cent more than Beach paid for the stock back in June.

Beach has recently made itself unpopular with other Great Artesian shareholders after moving to dismiss Shaw as its boss. Great Artesian’s annual general meeting saw other shareholders group together to overrule Beach, the major shareholder, over changes to the board.

Beach may now be keen to take a $290,000 profit and move on from Great Artesian.

But Drillsearch was not the only one with its eye on the company, according to Shaw.

“We are aware of a number of parties who had approached Beach in regard to expressing an interest in picking up Beach’s shareholding in Great Artesian,” he told Boardroomradio.

“Our understanding is that [Drillsearch’s] directors are certainly very keen to pursue a period of due diligence and that will involve an independent evaluation, as well as their own ongoing in-house evaluation of the opportunities that parcel of shares might present.”