Crosby Capital Announces Successful Takeover Bid for Orchard

Crosby Capital Partners Inc.

Eskdale Petroleum Pty Ltd. announced Tuesday that, having received acceptances in respect of 90.47% of the issued shares of Orchard petroleum Ltd. plus 100% of the options, the offer is now fully unconditional, according to Crosby Capital Partners Inc. Eskdale also confirmed that it will not extend the offer beyond the current deadline of 7 p.m. (Sydney time) Thursday.

ABOUT ORCHARD PETROLEUM

--Orchard Petroleum is an upstream oil and gas company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ticker - OPL AU).
-- At the A$0.81 offer price, Orchard has a market capitalization of approximately US$130 million.
--OPL has a portfolio of 11 high-quality projects, the majority of which are operated by OPL. Five of the projects are in partnership with Aera (Shell - Exxon Mobil JV and California's largest producer) and another on acreage leased from Occidental Petroleum.
--All of the projects are onshore California in the prolific San Joaquin and Sacramento basins. Eleven of the top 100 US oil fields are in the San Joaquin basin, including four of the top 10.
--OPL's project leases are all adjacent to and extensions of existing giant mature producing oil and gas fields, with an abundance of infrastructure to supply the vast US market.

ABOUT ESKDALE

Eskdale owns directly 9,056,225 shares of Orchard, representing 4.52% of Orchard's issued share capital. Eskdale also owns all of the issued share capital of the Crosby Orchard Fund Inc., which in turn owns 14,728,814 shares of Orchard, representing 7.34% of Orchard's issued share capital.

On 1 December 2006, Eskdale made a cash offer to Orchard's shareholders to purchase their shares in Orchard for A$0.81 each.

Crosby currently owns 100% of the ordinary share capital of ESK Limited, the holding company of Eskdale, which represents 30% of its total issued share capital. The Crosby Active Opportunities Fund, which is managed by Crosby Asset Management, currently owns 61.8% of the total issued share capital of ESK Limited through its investment in preference shares. These percentage holdings will change prior to the completion of the acquisition of all the issued share capital of Orchard.

ABOUT CROSBY CAPITAL PARTNERS

Crosby Capital Partners Inc. is a leading independent deal-focused Asia-oriented merchant banking and asset management group.


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