Saba Petroleum Co.: A Canadian company on...

Saba Petroleum Co.: A Canadian company on Thursday announced plans to increase its majority stake in the company by purchasing about 190,000 additional shares on the open market.

Capco Resources Ltd. of Calgary, Alberta, which currently owns 55% of Irvine-based Saba Petroleum, also announced that it has recently began operating an environmental remediation and testing laboratory in Ventura. Shares of Saba Petroleum closed Thursday at $3.36 on the American Stock Exchange, down about 1.56 cents.

Last year, Capco Resources bought about 2.1 million shares of Saba’s 3.8 million shares outstanding. Ilyas Chaudhary, an Anaheim investor, is chairman of both Capco Resources and Saba Petroleum.