Vancouver-headquartered Trans-Orient, which last year signalled its intention to return to active exploration New Zealand after a six-year break, said it had raised the capital by private placement of 5.9 million units at $US1 each.
Trans-Orient’s acquisition and exploration activities centre on New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and the Timor Sea region of Indonesia.
In New Zealand, it operates two onshore petroleum exploration licences totalling almost a million hectares in the East Coast Basin.
PEP 38348 covers 2147 square kilometres of land in northern Poverty Bay, while PEP 38349 covers 6600sq.km of land in southern Hawkes Bay.
Late last year, the company said these acquisitions represented a strategic position in an under-explored basin with high potential exploration and an unconventional resource opportunity.
It said it would be targeting shallow Miocene-aged sandstones and deeper Paleocene-aged and upper Cretaceous fractured carbonaceous oil shales.
Initial exploration would consist of ground geochemistry surveys and further seismic work to obtain a better picture of regional oil and gas concentrations. It would then select the best-ranked prospects for a drilling campaign later this decade.
Trans-Orient previously explored the basin from 1998 through to 2000, identifying numerous leads and prospects, some defined to near-drill status.
The company owns 11.2% of Wellington-headquartered Austral Pacific Energy that holds major stakes in the onshore Taranaki $NZ25 million ($A22 million) Cheal oil field development and the Douglas gas-condensate discovery in PNG.
British company Rift Oil, which operates the Douglas permit, is headed by Jenni Lean, wife of former Austral boss Dave Bennett, who is a Trans-Orient director.
Trans-Orient also operates its technical office out of the Bennett-owned Karori premises that used to house Austral Pacific before current Austral chief Rick Webber shifted his team to downtown Wellington last year.
The PEP 38738-01 (Cheal) partners are operator Austral (69.5%) and Canadian company TAG Oil (30.5%).
The PPL 235 (Douglas) partners are operator Rift Oil (65%) and Austral Pacific Energy (35%).
