“Round-rig” maker Sevan Marine has raised 1.1 million kroner ($174 million) by placing new shares with old investors, and now has money to finish its Sevan Driller, operate its Sevan Voyageur floating producer and make payments on two others.

The shares won’t enter trading until a mid-June shareholders meeting, when a 380-million-kroner fundraising drive will be aired. Sevan has four contracts for its round floating production storage and offloading vessels, for FPSOs, plus three drilling contracts with clients. Under development is a round FPSO for liequefied natural gas.

The fundraising news pushed Sevan shares up over four percent, as the great financing risk once taken on by the company looks set to ebb, just as major oil companies begin to weigh the benefits of licensing their own Sevan’s.

“We think that Petrobras might be interested in a unit similar to (Golait) in size and based on the license model,” Sevan chief exec Jan Erik Tveteraas told analysts and reporters recently. All that appeared to hinder a Brazilian buy was the matter coming before Petrobras’s board. Meanwhile, another “careful buyer” was still in the wings, Tveteraas said.

But Wednesday’s news appeared to the beginning of an end to “short-term” challenges.

Tags: Sevan Drilling AS, Sevan Marine