The natural gas drilling industry's HII Technologies Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection after closing down its Houston operations, which handled the watery solution used in hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas trapped in rocks below the earth's surface, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Officials who put HII Technologies into chapter 11 protection on Friday said that they plan to look for buyers for its equipment, which helped extract oil and natural gas in Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio and West Virginia. Potential buyers could also recapitalize the company in a way that "preserve[s] the public status of the company and its tax losses," according to court papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Victoria, Texas.
