Independent Oil & Gas (IOG) has rejected a £40m offer from UK-based oil and gas company Rockrose Energy to acquire IOG’s debt due to exploration and production company London Oil and Gas (LOG).

IOG said in an official response that RockRose’s offer “significantly undervalues LOG’s interest in IOG, and IOG itself.”

According to IOG, the total underlying value of LOG’s loan interests is £57m excluding warrants. However, RockRose’s £40m offer sought to acquire LOG’s convertible and non-convertible loans at their current face value of $38.7m.

IOG states that RockRose’s offer “cannot reasonably be described as ‘fair and generous’”, and claims it demonstrates RockRose’s intention to acquire IOG’s loans at a substantial discount.

RockRose’s offer was previously rejected on 5 March, with IOG’s board expressing its belief that the offer was “opportunistic and materially undervalued the Company.” This rejection was given with the full support of LOG and commercial lender London Capital & Finance.

IOG’s board unanimously concluded to reject RockRose’s proposal unequivocally, focusing its efforts on “unlocking additional value for all IOG stakeholders.” The company hopes to achieve this by securing a farm-out partner for its core oil and gas project.

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IOG chair Fiona MacAulay said: “The Board of IOG is focused on delivering value to our stakeholders via our already announced strategy to achieve FID for our sanction-ready portfolio of UK Southern Gas Basin gas fields.

“We are making good progress with shortlisted partners on our farm-out process and continue to believe that our strategy will deliver significantly better stakeholder returns than RockRose’s derisory proposals.

“It is disappointing to see RockRose trying to take advantage of LCF’s mini-bond holders by offering them a significant discount to the opportunistic possible offer to IOG shareholders, which already materially undervalues the Company.”