Hercules Offshore Inc., owner of the largest fleet of shallow-water drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, filed for bankruptcy with a plan to be taken over by senior creditors, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The company said that it planned to use the bankruptcy process to implement a proposal, announced in July, to cut $1.2 billion in debt. The plan calls for investors to trade their senior notes for almost 97 percent of Hercules’s equity. Some noteholders would also lend the company $450 million to help finish building a new oil-drilling rig, the company said in a statement. Under the plan, current shareholders would have a chance to split the 3 percent of the company not going to noteholders, Hercules said.
