After the New Zealand Exchange (NZX) had closed last night, Indo-Pacific issued a statement saying the company was to change its name to eliminate any confusion with a similarly named Canadian company. The proposed new name for Indo-Pacific Energy is 'Austral Pacific Energy Ltd', reflecting the company's primary Australia-New Zealand area of operations.

A special shareholders' meeting is to be held in Vancouver on December 31 to consider the name change, as well as the adoption of updated corporate bylaws.

Meanwhile, IPE chairman David Newman said the company had placed $US500,000 in unlisted convertible notes with Global Resource Investments Ltd, "a significant international participant in the resources industry".

The US-based institutional resource investment fund or an affiliate would also be participating in the New Zealand offer. "The investment by GRIL was a welcome additional endorsement of the company and its exploration assets", Newman said.

Indo-Pacific has also amended the terms of its outstanding Series A warrants, extending their term by approximately one year to coincide with the prospectus warrants. The Series A warrant holders are to agree to reduce the number of shares potentially able to be issued by 50% - from 1,673,690 to 836,845 shares - and also to increasing the exercise price from $US1.40 to $US1.50 per share.

Indo-Pacific announced the IPO last month, saying it would be offering four million shares at an issue price of $NZ2.00 per share and, in addition, for every two shares being offered, investors would receive one "warrant", exercisable at a price of $NZ2.10 at any time up to November 30, 2004.

The company's IPO is going extremely well and scheduled to close tomorrow, IPE chief executive Dave Bennett has said.

Indo-Pacific has also applied to the NZX for permission to list the shares and the warrants as an Overseas Listed Issuer, and the New Zealand listing is conditional on the company being accepted for listing on the "Toronto-headquartered TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV).