Dublin-based oil company Petroceltic is taking legal advice on a petition by Swiss investor Worldview to appoint an examiner for the company, and suspended trading in its shares.

Worldview’s takeover offer, through subsidiary Sunny Hill Limited, is just £0.03 a share, valuing the company at £6.4m ($9.1m). The offer was an 83 per cent discount on the share price that day of £0.18

This is despite Petroceltic’s 38.25 per cent interest in the Ain Tsila gas field in Algeria, from which it plans to produce 355 million cubic feet a day (cf/d). An engineering procurement and construction (EPC) tender for the $2bn field development is expected soon.

Skye Investments, which owns 19.4 per cent of Petroceltic, rejected the £6.4m offer, saying it substantially undervalued Petroceltic. The takeover cannot proceed until 90 per cent of shareholders approve it. Worldview owns 29.6 of Petroceltic shares, which were suspended at £0.075.

The Irish High Court granted full protection of the examinership process to Petroceltic, then adjourned the case until early April.

Petroceltic was not consulted on or advised of the petition.

Petroceltic was prevented by the petition from agreeing another waiver from its lenders, until 18 March. The company owes more than $218m, which the banks called after Petroceltic missed milestones on the Ain Tsila development.

Petroceltic signed a $500m syndicated loan deal in 2013 to develop Ain Tsila. The mandated lead arrangers were UK-based HSBC, the International Finance Corporation (part of the Washington-based World Bank Group), South Africa’s Nedbank and UK-based Standard Chartered.

Petroceltic senior debt is being traded at a 70 per cent discount, according to Worldview director Angelo Moskov.

Petroceltic and Worldview have been bitterly disputing the company’s investment strategy for more than a year. Petroceltic accused Worldview of attempting to avoid paying fair value for a takeover by driving down the company’s share price, in September 2015, an allegation Worldview dismisses.