Tony Buckingham's Heritage Oil tapped the City for $370m (£237m) yesterday as the explorer looks to fund sub-Saharan Africa's biggest-ever upstream oil deal.
Mr Buckingham, the former North Sea diver and the founder of Heritage who is worth an estimated £295m, is raising the cash to help to buy a 45 per cent stake in OML 30, a major oil exploration licence in Nigeria.
Heritage, working in tandem with a Nigerian partner, is paying $850m in total.
OML 30 has estimated proved and provable reserves of 1.1 billion barrels of oil.
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