"My only question is, wouldn’t they go out to market and give an...

"My only question is, wouldn’t they go out to market and give an update on what they need the cash for before they actually raise it?"

Discovering oil is a Material event so woud have to updated on and why wouldn't you if you needed more cash to test it, an event like that could only help raising at a higner price..

The incremental cost of this well was expected to be $2-3Mil so any downhole problems in this well beyond the Albian would likely be a relatively small cost, if they were finding oil they would deal with the problem and continue drilling, if they weren't it would be plugged and abandoned IMO..

Conclusion : I suspect its not related to this well but you can't discount anything.
Its also possible the JV may have decided on the rest of the drilling program so now armed with information on cash requirements are dealing with it.

What we do know is any drilling beyond SNE 6 will require more cash..

Cheers Whisky