London—Dentons has advised Hurricane Energy plc (Hurricane), the oil and gas fractured basement specialist, on a circa £74 million capital raising and open offer to existing shareholders. The funds will be used by Hurricane to advance the development and delineation of its Greater Lancaster Area assets in the North Sea and to secure the development timetable for the EPS phase of its Lancaster asset.

The deal is conditional on shareholder approval. The placing was managed by joint bookrunners Cenkos Securities and Macquarie Capital. Hurricane received strong investor demand which led to the placing being oversubscribed and resulted in a number of new institutional shareholders coming on to the register. This is the second capital raising that Dentons has advised Hurricane Energy on during 2016.

In April, Hurricane announced a £52.1 million capital raising to fund its 2016 North Sea drilling programme. Dentons also advised Hurricane on its listing on AIM in 2014.

Commenting on the deal, Dr Robert Trice, Chief Executive of Hurricane, said, "The transaction allows us to continue to strengthen the quality of our investor base. We are grateful for the support from our existing shareholders, particularly Kerogen Investor and Crystal Amber, and also extremely pleased to welcome a number of new blue-chip institutional shareholders to our register following the strong interest received in the Placing.

We believe that this reflects both the potential of Hurricane’s resource base and our ability to deliver against our strategy, as well as the growing confidence in the fractured basement opportunity in the UK." The Dentons team was led by corporate partner Darren Acres with support from managing associate Simon Mitchell, and associates Verity Kent, Farrah Kiyani and Wei Wu.