Ian Gowrie-Smith may have quit Skye-Pharma with a sour taste in his mouth after a bitter battle with rebel shareholders, but now he finds himself in something of a sweet spot.

His latest venture, Rift Oil – flat at 6.125p yesterday – discovered gas last year worth an estimated $18 billion (£9 billion) at present market prices in a drill hole in Douglas, Papua New Guinea (compare this with Rift’s market capitalisation of £43 million). He has negotiated an outline deal with Alcan to supply its Gove aluminium plant in Australia for the next 20 years, which depends on a gas pipeline being built linking Papua with Australia.

Last week the Australian bought out the 35 per cent stake of his venture partner in Austral, the Douglas project, for £5 million and the talk is that his brokers have already raised this extra cash in a share placing with an institutional shareholder – Royal Bank of Canada. Moreover, he is believed to have attracted interest from a big player in the liquefied natural gas market, which, in return for a cut of the project, is prepared to provide a ship that can take the gas off the Papua coast and convert it to liquid form for transport anywhere in the world to the highest bidder. This means that Alcan has a competitor in talks on the price it will pay Mr Gowrie-Smith over the next three months. Meanwhile, drilling on a second hole near by is halfway to the level where gas is expected.

Shares in SkyePharma, 43p two years ago when its founder quit, have collapsed further, losing another 1.01p yesterday to close at 5.74p, amid growing fears that holders of its £70 million convertible debt will demand their money back in May next year.

Wagon, the automotive engineer, fell 3p to 11½p after unveiling a ten-for-one rights issue at 1p each to pay off €155 million (£123 millon) of debt.

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