Rich pickings in African island oil

Steve Hawkes, Evening Standard
12 November 2004

THE tiny West African island group of Sao Tome e Principe has poor roads, rampant malaria and a population of about 150,000.

But now City punters are being given the chance to make money out of an oil bonanza that is set to transform one of the world's poorest countries.

Equator Exploration is looking to raise up to £20m through an Alternative Investment Market listing to hunt for oil in two huge deepwater blocks, each of them 4,000 square kilometres.

The company negotiated options for two blocks in 2001 after US giant ExxonMobil sparked an oil rush by finding deposits thought to hold up to 10bn barrels of crude.
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