Miller Energy Resources Inc., a Texas-based oil and gas driller that operates in Alaska, filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday with a plan to hand control of the company to an affiliate of private-equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC and hedge fund Highbridge Capital Management LLC, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Miller Energy filed for chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Anchorage and has a deal in place with junior lenders Apollo Investment Corp., part of private-equity giant Apollo, and Highbridge, the investment management arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Like a number of other independent oil-company executives who have been forced to put their companies into bankruptcy in recent month, Miller Chief Executive Carl Giesler blamed his company’s financial woes in part on plummeting oil prices. The price of global benchmark Brent crude fell to less than $45 a barrel this summer from more than $100 a barrel a year ago. Miller Energy, a former Tennessee company that shifted its oil and gas drilling to Alaska in recent years, has also been beset by other problems. The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused the company of accounting fraud and in August, a group of companies that said they were owed millions from Miller’s Alaska subsidiary moved to push the unit into bankruptcy. Read more. (Subscription required.)
For further analysis of oil and gas bankruptcies, be sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy.
