First Australian said this morning it had reached an in-principle agreement with Hartleys to raise the cash through the placement of 95 million shares at A13c per share to institutional clients based in the United Kingdom, North America and Asia.

The company, which also has an office in Houston, said the new funds, in conjunction with the $13.5 million in cash on hand, would form the basis of a new, and now fully-funded, exploration program.

Plans are now afoot to conduct a 3D seismic survey on its deep water offshore Senegal blocks to follow up on prospects and leads identified in reprocessed 2D seismic by joint venture partner Hunt Oil.

The company believes a number of these prospects are “capable of hosting several hundreds of thousands of millions of barrels of oil”.

Funds will also be applied to the drilling of multiple wells in the Gulf of Mexico, including Galveston Bay and Lake Long Deep, and also two gas plays at Kakwa in Alberta Canada.

The company is also a 5% partner, through subsidiary Oil Australia, in the Wei 6-12S wildcat well that operator Roc Oil said today encountered a number of sandstones with oil and wet gas shows.

Shares in the company were trading up 5.5c (36%) in morning trade at 20c.