announcement

Level 9, 575 Bourke Street Queen Street ? Melbourne, VIC 3000
GPO Box 2850 ? Melbourne, VIC 3001

1

ASX ANNOUNCEMENT 8th May 2014

Austin working with Mizuho Securities USA on $40million debt financing

• Austin planning transition from exploration to development
• Exploration success at Niobrara and Eagle Ford is de-risking properties allowing
access to debt capital for large-scale ongoing development
• Potential for more than 300 horizontal wells at Austin’s Colorado and Texas
properties
• Facility will allow Austin ongoing participation in highly prolific Eagle Ford
drilling campaign in Texas


Austin Exploration (ASX: AKK) has engaged Mizuho Securities USA Inc. to raise $40 million in debt financing to
fund the ongoing development of its two major oil and gas properties in Colorado and Texas.

Mizuho Securities will act as an introducing broker to assemble a consortium of investors.

The funding package will be used to develop the potential of Austin’s Eagle Ford and Niobrara assets following
the Company’s successful exploration program where every well drilled intersected oil and gas. The presence
of significant hydrocarbon systems in both these properties has also been confirmed in well flow testing.
While Austin’s exploration has been funded from shareholder equity, now that the significant presence of oil
and gas has been confirmed and the development opportunity de-risked, the Company can justify debt-funding
the development of its core properties in Colorado and Texas. Accordingly the Company is now transitioning to
debt for the ongoing development of these two properties.

The Company has begun an extensive formal due-diligence with Mizuho on the $40 mil debt program. The
Company expects to close on this within 90 – 120 days and will update the market as to the details of the debt
program at this time.

Further, the Company’s high confidence in its two core properties has been reinforced with the release of a
report on the productivity of oil and natural gas wells in the US by the Energy Information Administration in the
US (E.I.A.) released on March 11, 2014. This report demonstrated that Austin’s Niobrara and Eagle Ford
properties are in two of the three largest oil basins in the US. The report also points to a steady increase in the size of many basins across the United States because of the increasing precision and efficiency of horizontal
drilling and hydraulic fracturing in oil and natural gas extraction. Many resource-producing basins are
experiencing an increasing yield over time in either oil (Eagle Ford, Niobrara, Bakken) or natural gas Marcellus,
Haynesville). The findings are outlined in the following diagram:

... Can't copy and past diagram..........


EIA: Oil and Gas Shale Play Comparison April 2013 and April 2014


Media Contact
Martin Debelle, Citadel
+61 2 9290 3033
+61 409 911 189
[email protected]