Alpine Summit Energy Partners filed for bankruptcy on a confluence of factors including unplanned facility outages, falling natural-gas prices and scarcer financing from more socially conscious lenders, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Nashville, Tenn.-based oil-and-gas operator filed for chapter 11 Wednesday, less than a month after the company said it was ending its efforts to restructure out of court, and plans to sell its assets in bankruptcy. The publicly traded company said it began in March to look for a buyer without filing for chapter 11, but it wasn’t happy with the offers it received. Alpine’s problems included a 54% drop in natural-gas prices in the first quarter from the same period a year earlier, Chief Executive Craig Perry said in a sworn declaration filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston. Financing has also become more difficult for the oil-and-gas industry, partly due to lenders’ increasing reluctance to work with fossil-fuel borrowers as they became more aware of environmental, social and corporate-governance goals, Perry said. Alpine, which has drilled more than 40 wells since 2018, said problems with a service partner resulted in unplanned outages at facilities in April and May, reducing volumes in part of South Texas by 70%. Operations returned to normal by mid-May, but the company said the downtime would still significantly hurt its financial results.
