Angelo Moskov, a former proprietary trader at Deutsche Bank AG turned activist investor, spent two years locked in a bitter feud for control of a tiny energy company that lost much of its value when commodity prices crashed. Now he wants up to $500 million to do it again.

Moskov’s London-based Worldview Capital Management LLP, which spent about one-quarter of its capital taking over gas explorer Petroceltic International Plc in 2016, will seek the additional funds from investors early this year, he said in an interview. His targets are similar: publicly-traded energy companies that continue to struggle more than three years after commodities prices tumbled, he said.

“It’s like a perfect playground,” Moskov, 50, said in his office in London’s Mayfair district. “These companies are like orphans.”

Moskov joins investors seeking out energy deals as they wager that the commodities slump has come to an end. Total deal volume involving exploration and production companies, or E&Ps, jumped to $169 billion last year, data from research firm 1Derrick Ltd. show, the highest since 2014, when oil prices began a plunge that roiled economies and triggered bankruptcies across the sector, according to Bloomberg.

Yet wagering on commodities has been a painful trade amid volatile swings in prices. Janus Henderson Group Plc shut its AlphaGen Elnath fund in December after it lost 34 percent for 2017, Bloomberg reported Jan. 18. Famed oil trader Andy Hall shuttered his main hedge fund at Astenbeck Capital Management LLC after big losses in the first half of 2017, people familiar with the matter said in August.

Moskov, a Bulgarian native who worked at Deutsche Bank until 2004, said if he can raise the funds, Worldview will seek out stakes in London-based E&Ps with assets in the Middle East and Africa and with market capitalizations of between $100 million and $500 million, he said, declining to name potential targets.

Many London-based E&Ps flocked to the Middle East and Africa as prices soared only to lose most of their value after prices tumbled in 2014. And while oil and natural gas have both dropped roughly 40 percent from their peaks of that year, the energy companies often fell far more.

But Moskov is confident and seeks out a new 500 million USD to prove it right.