SandRidge Energy Inc. defended its move to purchase Atinum Midcon I LLC’s oil and gas drilling investments out of bankruptcy, urging a federal judge to disregard protest from Wells Fargo Bank N.A. officials who said the bank’s proposal to forgive $75 million is a better offer, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In court papers, SandRidge lawyers said the offer from Wells Fargo, which handles Atinum’s loan of more than $265 million, wasn’t valid because it covered only a subset of Atinum’s roughly 1,600 oil and gas wells in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. Under its offer, Wells Fargo offered to forgive $75 million in debt owed by Atinum, a Houston energy investor. SandRidge’s bid is valued about $67 million, made up of $47 million in cash and about $19 million in forgiven debt. Earlier this week, Wells Fargo officials argued that lawyers who put Atinum into bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston on July 22 wrongly declared SandRidge’s offer as superior.
