Beach has announced that the vehicle for its long-held royalty and exploration entitlements would be Ramelius Resources Limited.

Veteran Perth-based miner, Mr Joe Houldsworth, has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of Ramelius with exploration to commence as soon as the company lists.

In addition to the Beach gold assets, Mr Houldsworth has in the past two years, further widened the Ramelius gold portfolio by acquiring rights to other properties - principally in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields belt - in the same vicinity as projects to which Beach has the royalty entitlement.

The result is that most of the new company's gold projects are now contained in the Coolgardie Mineral Field.

Ramelius - which plans to list on the Australian Stock Exchange on 30 December, 2002 - also announced today a $6 million Initial Public Offering to fund immediate exploration on what it describes as "advanced" gold projects.

Shareholders in Beach Petroleum - a seed capitalist for the new gold company - will have priority access to a third of the retail offering.

Ramelius will offer 30 million shares at 20 cents per share to raise $6 million with one free option for every two shares acquired. 10 million shares will be offered to Beach Petroleum shareholders on a priority basis.

Therer is a minimum subscription of 22.5 million shares, raising $4.5 million with minimum packages of 10,000 shares. The offer closes on 11 December, 2002.

If fully subscribed, Ramelius will list with 49.8 million shares on issue and be capitalised at listing at approximately $10 million with Beach retaining a holding of approximately 7.5 million shares in Ramelius.

Ramelius's suite of assets includes a majority, or total equity interest, in eight advanced projects, farm-in interests in an additional four projects and the six royalty entitlements previously held by Beach Petroleum in goldfields in Western Australia.

All but three of the Ramelius projects are gold-based. The others are copper/zinc opportunities.

"Beach has been in possession of a variety of gold assets for a number of years. While Beach's core business is petroleum exploration and production, it has always believed its gold assets to be of significant potential value," according to Ramelius Chairman, Mr Robert Kennedy, who is also Chairman of Beach Petroleum.

"With world gold prices holding at the higher end of the scale during 2002, Beach decided that it could maximise the value of these assets to its shareholders by expanding and developing them to produce a stand-alone gold exploration company.