Gold Coast ASX-listed company Icon Energy has lost access to its last remaining gas tenement

Directors of an ASX-listed Gold Coast energy company are scrambling to rescue it after it was blindsided by a critical government rejection.

Directors of ASX-listed Icon Energy are scrambling to rescue the company after it lost access to its only remaining gas tenement.

Shares in the 39-year-old Broadbeach Waters company, dived more than 72 per cent to $0.003 Thursday morning after a voluntary trading suspension was lifted.

The resumption of trade came with an announcement the Queensland Department of Resources had rejected an application to renew Icon’s permit for its ATP855 tenement, which has been in expensive limbo since a joint venture with Chevron and Beach Energy fell over in 2015.

“The Department’s view is that the tenement has expired and cannot be renewed,” Icon’s announcement said.

The Department expressed doubt over Icon’s financial capability to carry out its intentions to extract resources from the site.

Icon described the rejection as “a significant interruption” to its business, saying it had engaged lawyers to pursue the issue.

Co-foudner of Icon Energy Ray James. Picture: Mike Batterham

The company, which has reported accumulated losses of $101.6m, was apparently blindsided by the State’s rejection of the renewal.

In its full-year financial report, Icon said “the directors expect that ATP 855 will be renewed”.

At the end of last year, it raised more than $2m through share placements and options and planned to raise another $4m to acquire seismic equipment.

Icon has suffered an excruciating decline in price and prospects recent years after failing to find a funding partner to extract what it said was a $700m gas resource from ATP855, located in the Nappamerri Trough in the Cooper Basin.

In 2017-18 the company sold its high-profile headquarters for $7.8m but still posted a $4.04m loss.

The Icon Energy headquarters at Broadbeach Waters. Photo: Supplied

Three of the company’s tenements in Victoria were rendered worthless in 2018, after that government banned fracking for coal seam gas.

In January 2020, the company elected not to renew the contract of founding managing director Ray James, who had been paid as much as $649,000 a year and stayed on as a non-executive director.

In 2021, Icon announced a new “road map to commercialisation”.

The new plan did away with fracking, with the company saying it would use “plasma methods” to produce “blue hydrogen” from the natural gas.

It is yet to find a funding partner for that endeavour.

Icon launched in 1993 and listed on the stock exchange four years later