Nexus said this morning that the placement of 36.84 million shares would be done by a bookbuild to Australian and overseas institutional and other non-retail investors.

Nexus said it also intended to let eligible Australian and New Zealand registered shareholders subscribe for up to $5000 worth of shares through a share purchase plan.

“The funds raised will be used to fund the completion of drilling at the Crux-2 ST-1 well and associated ongoing working capital requirements,” Nexus said.

Deutsche Bank AG and Wilson HTM will act as joint lead managers to the capital raising.

The announcement by the Melbourne-based mid-cap comes after work was first halted three weeks ago, on February 28, pending the arrival of cyclone George.

The rig was re-manned and drilling restarted less than a week later on March 7.

But yesterday Nexus said drilling had once again stopped in the past week due to the failure of a section of drill string near the drill bit. The company has subsequently been unable to recover the equipment from the bottom of the hole and so set a cement plug before undertaking a deviation.

Drilling restarted yesterday on the well, which is expected to intersect the reservoir sands by mid-next week. Logging and downhole sampling is expected to be completed by early the following week.

Last week, the company was forced to downgrade the best estimate contingent resource at the Crux gas/condensate project by 16 million barrels after Crux-2 failed to encounter the uppermost “A” gas reservoir structure as intersected in the original discovery well.

As a result, Nexus said the best estimate contingent resource was now 55 million barrels of liquids, as opposed to the 71MMboe it had previously predicted. The upside estimate now totals 71MMboe.

The previous estimate was released during a heated takeover battle in which Nexus was trying evade the clutches of Anzon Australia. At the time, the boost to Crux’s contingent reserves suggested that the Anzon offer was underpriced.