Japan's top oil and gas explorer Inpex has announced plans for a $6.7 billion global share offer to finance its Ichthys gas project in Australia's north-west.
Inpex wants to pipe gas from its Ichthys field off Western Australia to an LNG processing plant in Darwin.
Inpex will issue up to 1.3 million new shares. 566,000 will be sold in Japan and the same amount overseas.
The financing will dilute the sale of existing shares by more than 50 per cent.
Research company Dealogic said the share sale is the biggest equity finance deal among non-financial companies in Japan this year.
Inpex also cited the Abadi LNG Project in Indonesia and an oil field in Kazakhstan as high priorities to be funded by the capital raising.
In May Inpex announced its planned first gas date for the $20 billion project had been pushed back by one year to 2016.
Liquefied natural gas production from the project's onshore facility is forecast to start in the fourth quarter of 2015.
Inpex had previously flagged that FID would take place in the second half of 2010, which was pushed back from an earlier intention to make a FID in the first half of this calendar year.
Inpex is expected to release a draft environmental impact statement on the project next week.
