On 27 November 2008, Griffin purchased 16,666,667 ordinary shares in Spitfire Oil Ltd (“Spitfire”), representing a 39.2% interest in the issued share capital of Spitfire, at £0.15 per share for a total cash consideration of £2,500,000 ($4,542,000) from Citadel Equity Fund Ltd (“Citadel”). This purchase enabled Griffin to acquire a strategic stake in a project that meets Griffin’s investment criteria whilst spreading both political and commodity risk. The opportunity to acquire this strategic stake at such a favourable price, being at a 75% discount to the initial public offering price, was considered and approved by Griffin’s independent directors. All of Griffin’s directors have experience in the oil and gas sector. Mr Mladen Ninkov and Mr Roger Goodwin, being directors of both Griffin and Spitfire, provide Griffin with significant influence over Spitfire, requiring Griffin to treat Spitfire as an associated company and thereby recognise its share of Spitfire’s financial results.

Spitfire was incorporated on 2 May 2007 and, on 11 July 2007, acquired the entire issued capital of Spitfire Oil Pty Ltd (formerly Hurricane Fuels Pty Ltd) by way of a share swap. On 18 July 2007, Spitfire’s shares were admitted to trading on AIM under the symbol “SRO”. At the same time, Spitfire placed 16,666,667 new Ordinary Shares with Citadel at £0.60 per share to raise £10,000,000 (before expenses).

Spitfire’s principal activity is the pursuance of the production of fuel oil, distillate and other by products from the Salmon Gums Lignite deposits in Western Australia. Spitfire’s tenements are near Salmon Gums, some 100 kilometres north of Esperance, in the south-east of Western Australia. Salmon Gums is located next to a main road, railway and pipeline connecting Kalgoorlie and the port of Esperance. The tenements contain a large lignite (brown coal) deposit with a reported JORC Resource (at 4m coal thickness & 45% ashdb cut off) of: Indicated 406 million tonnes and Inferred of 470 million tonnes for a total of 876 million tonnes. This substantial resource is the result of a one and a half year drilling campaign involving 420 new drilled and cored holes for a total of 12,624 metres.

Spitfire, in conjunction with Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia, has been developing its proprietary L2V™ process to extract oil and other products from the lignite at Salmon Gums. The L2V™ process is a form of Pyrolysis, a variation of the coal coking process which has been used for over 100 years and which is known to extract oils and gases from coals.

The Salmon Gums lignite has a high Kerogen (hydrocarbon) content which, if the current oil yields achieved with the test reactors in the Curtin University laboratory can be maintained at an industrial scale, corresponds to an oil resource in the range of 330 to 420 million barrels on the reported Resource of lignite via Pyrolysis extraction.

In the autumn of 2009, testwork and investigations into Spitfires’ proprietary L2VTM process to extract oil and other products from the lignite at Salmon Gums highlighted the need for additional research in refining and finalising the process for commercial production. As a result, active development work was suspended pending the conclusion of a full technical and economic review, including all viable options being evaluated for the project, including the use of alternative technologies, technical and financial joint venture partners and the sale of the Salmon Gums lignite tenements. Consequently, Spitfire immediately retrenched its full time employees.

Although Spitfire’s primary objective remains the realisation of the value contained in the large resource contained at Salmon Gums, management continues to evaluate other energy related opportunities and other possible synergistic business opportunities.

In September 2009, Spitfire commissioned a gold exploration program into the granite basement of a geologically prospective area at the intersection of the two faults located on its tenements. The reconnaissance program consisted of a desktop study utilising in-house geological data of the area and a specially commissioned geophysical interpretation to define the target zone which was tested by 132 air-core holes drilled on a widespaced 800 x 200 metre grid for a total of 7,706 metres with an average hole depth of 58.4 metres. The results are encouraging with several areas of anomalous gold delineated, two of which occur along important regional structures identified by the desktop studies. The two structural anomalies contain values up to 23 parts per billion in an area in which bedrock chips indicate a metasediment sequence occurring between two areas of granite. Some anomalous values were also recorded in the surrounding granite, some of which is pyritic. Given the early stage of investigation these are encouraging results and further work is required to infill drill the anomalous zones and also to extend coverage over the remainder of the anomalous structures throughout the rest of the Spitfire exploration licences.

Further information on Spitfire Oil Ltd may be found at www.spitfireoil.com.