Dart’s wholly owned subsidiary Dart International, which manages the company’s unconventional gas interests in Indonesia, China, India, continental Europe and the UK, will list on London’s AIM in November.

Dart says it will retain majority ownership of Dart International and the companies will share “key technical and operational expertise”

John McGoldrick, who has been running Dart’s international arm, will be chief executive officer of the new listed entity.

Dart believes the nature of coal seam gas and shale gas commercialisation in Australia and overseas is fundamentally different: in Australia, the main game is exporting CSG as LNG while Dart International’s focus is “on the rapid commercialisation of gas resources and reserves for domestic consumption”

The company says Dart “is trading at a material discount to both its Australian and international peers” because its diversified group of Australian and overseas assets “has not been well understood by Australian equity markets”

Dart shares on the ASX are trading at less than a third of their value one year ago.

It hopes a refocus on its New South Wales CSG assets will arrest that slide, particularly after the NSW government recently ended 16 months of inaction and renewed a slew of CSG exploration licences.

Dart shares were strongly traded yesterday but finished unchanged on 17.5c.