By Staff Report Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

Venoco has extended CEO Tim Marquez’s deadline to July 20 to disclose how he will finance his effort to take the company private.

Marquez’s buyout of the company, which is based in Denver but has about 150 employees in the Tri-Counties, was approved by shareholders on June 5. But at the time of the approval, Marquez had yet to disclose how he would come up with the $385 million to $400 million needed to finance the deal and had a deadline of June 12 to do so.

Marquez owns 50.3 percent of Venoco, which he founded. He was ousted from the firm in a dispute with Enron and then regained control of it before an IPO in 2006 made it a publicly traded company again. He is also a director. The going-private transaction has been overseen by a special committee of the company’s board that doesn’t include him.

That committee approved language earlier this year that strongly suggested it would give Marquez an extension on the financing date if he asked for one. Rick Walker, chairman of that committee, said in a release that the board granted the extension because “significant progress that has been made toward obtaining the necessary financing, including a signed term sheet,” according to a news release.