“We are very pleased with the IPO; we were not accepting oversubscriptions, but there was some unsatisfied demand,” company chief executive Dave Bennett told EnergyReview.Net from Wellington.
About 500 New Zealand private investors and three financial institutions participated in the capital raising. They will join Indo-Pacific's current shareholders, about 7000 mainly North Americans.
Bennett told ERN that well-known US firm Global Resource Investments was one of the three finance firms, with the others being New Zealand institutions. However, he declined to name the Kiwi companies.
IPE chairman David Newman said the level of investor interest was a vote of confidence in the company’s upcoming onshore Taranaki drilling and production program. “We are pleased to welcome New Zealand investors to our company and look forward to implementing the coming year’s activities.”
IPE anticipated starting trading on the New Zealand Stock Market in early January, following listing on the Toronto Venture Exchange (TSXV), which has been delayed until after a special shareholders meeting on December 31, where the company will change its name to ‘Austral Pacific Energy Ltd’ to avoid confusion with a similarly named Canadian company.
Indo-Pacific announced the IPO last month, saying it would be offering four million shares at an issue price of $NZ2.00 per share. In addition, for every two shares offered, investors received one tradable warrant, exercisable at a price of $NZ2.10 any time before November 30, 2004.
The associated prospectus said the company planned to drill up to 10 wells during the next two years, as well as using funds from the IPO to help develop the onshore Taranaki Kahili and Cheal discoveries.
Today Bennett said the first of those 10 wells should be drilled early next year and would be a third exploration-appraisal well in the shallow Miocene-aged Cheal field in licence PEP 38738. This would likely be followed by a “deep gas” well into an Eocene-aged prospect, but not the Waitoriki mentioned in the prospectus.
