Director/PDMR Shareholding

Embargoed: 0700hrs 9 June 2016

Hurricane Energy plc

("Hurricane" or the "Company")

Award of Shares under the Deferred Bonus Plan and Conditional Share Awards under the Performance Share Plan

Hurricane Energy plc (AIM: HUR.L), the UK-based oil and gas company focused on hydrocarbon resources in naturally fractured basement reservoirs, announces that it has allotted 2,655,503 new ordinary shares of 0.1p each ("Bonus Shares") to Sanne Fiduciary Services Limited in its capacity as trustee of the Hurricane Energy Employee Benefit Trust ("EBT") at a subscription price of 0.1p per share. The EBT has subscribed for the Bonus Shares on behalf of participants under the Company's Deferred Bonus Plan ("DBP"), including the directors listed below. The Bonus Shares have been issued to satisfy deferred bonus awards relating to the 2014 financial year that were not previously granted due to an ongoing close period.  

The Bonus Shares were awarded to the participants under the DBP at an approximate price of 17.42 pence per share, being the average of the closing prices for the three dealing days immediately preceding 8 June 2016. 

Under the DBP, the following directors of the Company were awarded the following number of Bonus Shares:

The aggregate of their beneficial holdings are now as follows:

The EBT has been instructed by the aforementioned directors to sell a sufficient number of shares to cover their personal tax liability arising as a consequence of their award of Bonus Shares. The Company anticipates making further announcements following any such dealings by the EBT in the Company's shares in due course.

Application has been made for the Bonus Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM. Admission is expected to take place on 13 June 2016.  The Bonus Shares will rank pari passu with the existing issued ordinary shares.

Following the allotment of the Bonus Shares, Hurricane's total issued and voting share capital will comprise 984,030,277 ordinary shares.  This figure may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, securities of the Company.

On 8 June 2016 the Company granted Alistair Stobie, Chief Financial Officer, 4,533,333 conditional share awards under the Company's Performance Share Plan in accordance with the terms of his employment. The terms of these awards are substantially in accordance with the terms and performance conditions of the Company's Performance Share Plan as set out in the Company's Admission Document. 

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About Hurricane

Hurricane is an oil and gas company focused on hydrocarbon resources in naturally fractured basement reservoirs. The Company's focus is to discover, appraise and develop oil reserves in basement rock. Hurricane has already successfully discovered substantial volumes of oil on the UKCS. The Company has 444-470 mmboe of 2C Contingent Resources and 432-442 mmboe P50 Prospective Resources on acreage it controls 100%.

In 2014, Hurricane drilled and tested an appraisal well on its Lancaster oil field West of Shetland. The highly successful operations demonstrated that the Company could produce commercial quantities of oil from Lancaster. The Company will undertake a further well programme on Lancaster, incorporating a Pilot well and a Horizontal Sidetrack well as part of a continuous drilling programme in the summer of 2016.  The Horizontal Sidetrack well is designed to refine the Lancaster Contingent Resource range (currently 62 - 456 mmboe), will provide a second future production well and will provide new information to help optimally plan the Lancaster field development. The Pilot well objectives are to confirm the depth of Oil Water Contact, evaluate the properties of a potential aquifer to establish how supportive it is of production and evaluate the overlying Victory sandstone resource range.