Empire Petroleum board of directors chairman Phil Mulacek recently increased his holdings in the Tulsa-based company with a $5 milllion purchase of shares.
Two years ago Mulacek, founder of InterOil Corporation, owned nearly 18.4% of Empire when he joined the company’s board of directors. This week, Empire filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission, reporting on an amended purchase agreement.
Originallly, Mulacek purchased 625,000 shares of common stock valued at $8 a share. But a few days later, the per share purchase price was changed to $8.21, resulting in Mulacek only receiving 609,013 shares of Empire common stock for an aggregate of 1,240,845 shares rather than 1,256,832 shares.
It’s not the first major business involvement between Mulacek and Empire Petroleum. He was described as a “key financial partner” in 2021 in Empire’s acquisition of the Eunice Monument Field in the Permian Basin from ExxonMobil. He was also a joint development partner with Empire in its Fort trinidad Field in Texas.
Mulacek was the founder and former Chairman and CEO of an NYSE-listed InterOil company and retired in 2013. Under his 14-year tenure, the company’s market cap increased from US$10 million to over US$5.6 billion, with the share price improving from US$0.50 cents to over US$109 per share. Mulacek led the discovery of 1.6 billion barrels of oil equivalent in Papua New Guinea.