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A mining company’s debt-cutting plan will leave taxpayers facing a bigger bill for cleaning up nearly two dozen hazardous sites primarily in the central U.S., including a swath of northeast Oklahoma that once produced lead ore for bullets in both World Wars, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The 22 properties will be shed by miner Peabody Energy Corp. when it leaves bankruptcy with a plan that shifts cleanup costs to the government. Peabody’s chapter 11 plan, approved on March 17 by a federal judge, and related settlements allow the company to provide about 2 percent of as much as $2.7 billion in environmental liabilities asserted by federal, state and tribal authorities for the sites polluted from lead and zinc mining that ended decades ago.

Jacksonville’s uphill climb in recovering $210,000 from a business co-owned by City Council member Katrina Brown got harder this week when her mother filed a chapter 11 petition for a separate business called KJB Specialties Inc., which does business as Jerome Brown Barbecue & Wings, the Florida Times-Union reported today. The city filed suit in January to recover the $210,000 grant it gave to Cowealth for a barbecue sauce manufacturing operation on Commonwealth Avenue. The city’s suit contends Cowealth, which is co-owned by Katrina Brown and her mother, Joann, failed to create any of the 56 jobs required by the economic development agreement. Read more.

Delve into restaurant bankruptcy issues at the “Why Are My Favorite Restaurants Closing?” session at this year’s Annual Spring Meeting. Click here to register! 

The Gordmans bankruptcy has attracted two bidders who want to keep at least some of the company's 106 discount department stores operating, the Associated Press reported yesterday. The Omaha, Neb.-based company, filed for bankruptcy protection last week and announced plans to liquidate its inventory after posting losses in five of its last six quarters. Former Gordmans CEO Jeff Gordman is leading one of the groups interested in the company's assets. Gordman left the company in 2013 after clashing with the Sun Capital private equity firm that owns half the company. The other potential bidder is Houston-based Stage Stores that operates roughly 800 stores under several different brands. Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Saladino said at a hearing on Monday that finding a buyer to continue operating the stores would be the best outcome for employees. But any bids will have to be deemed fair to Gordmans' creditors who are owed $131 million.

Ultrapetrol (Bahamas) Ltd., the owner of one of the largest shipping fleets in South America, has sailed through bankruptcy court after spending just over a month in chapter 11, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Robert D. Drain signed off on Ultrapetrol’s chapter 11 plan, which its creditors had already voted to approve. The company, which operates mainly in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay blamed falling commodity prices — namely the concurrent downturns in soybean, oil and gas, and iron ore— for a liquidity squeeze that caused it to run afoul of its borrowing terms. Under the restructuring plan, Southern Cross subsidiary Sparrow Capital Investments Ltd. will acquire Ultrapetrol’s river business, with some 685 barges for $73 million. Proceeds from the sale of the river unit are earmarked for the holding company’s creditors and will be used to retire some $225 million in outstanding bond debt.

When bankrupt Lily Robotics announced that its self-flying, follow-along camera drone wouldn't be produced, it promised to refund $34 million in pre-orders back to its customers. That's still the plan, but according to a new refund request form, the company isn't sure when those payments will actually go out, Engadget reported on Friday. The refund process is being run through Prime Clerk, the agency helping Lily Robotics navigate its bankruptcy claims. By making the refund process part of its bankruptcy, the company is hopefully ensuring that all of its customers will eventually be paid back for their pre-order. Lily Robotics hopes to refund most customers directly on the credit card, but is working on a plant to reimburse customers by other means if the original purchase card is no longer active.

Paychecks have bounced for some of the 350 Sungevity workers who were abruptly laid off ahead of the struggling solar company’s recent bankruptcy filing, increasing the pressure on employees who lost their jobs, the <em>San Jose Mercury News</em> reported on Saturday. Sungevity said that the checks bounced due to confusion by its bank, and it is attempting to remedy the problems. The company didn’t identify the bank, and it didn’t specify how many former employees’ paychecks bounced.

The Diocese of Duluth has been granted an extension to deliver its plan to emerge from bankruptcy protection, WDAZ.com reported on Friday. The Catholic diocese, which has been under chapter 11 protection since December 2015, was scheduled to file a reorganization plan by Friday, but U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel granted a motion to extend that deadline as the diocese continues to seek coverage of sexual abuse claims from its insurers. "Despite the ongoing litigation, the Diocese (remains) optimistic that the parties will reach a consensual plan through the mediation process," attorneys Ford Elsaesser and Phillip Kunkel wrote in the motion. "However, before the parties are able to negotiate a plan of reorganization several legal issues need to be resolved." The diocese, which was hit with a $4.9 million verdict weeks before filing for bankruptcy, is facing a total of 125 abuse claims filed under the Minnesota Child Victims Act.

A U.S. judge formally approved Peabody Energy Corp.’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy on Friday after the coal producer struck a settlement with the U.S. government over legacy environmental claims at a gold and metal mining subsidiary, Reuters reported yesterday. Under a last-minute deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, Peabody agreed to create a $43 million trust to manage environmental liabilities stemming from its dormant Gold Fields Mining subsidiary, according to court papers. St. Louis-based Peabody, the world's largest private-sector coal producer, owns mines in Australia and the United States and supplies the global market with the metallurgical coal used in steelmaking and the thermal coal used to generate electricity. Peabody expects to exit bankruptcy in early April with about $2 billion of debt amid dramatically improved short-term prospects for its business versus a year ago, when it sought chapter 11 protection with more than $8 billion of debt. In the environmental settlement, the Department of Justice was negotiating on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, five states and seven Indian tribes. The parties filed claims worth billions of dollars, which Peabody disputed but said that it agreed to settle to avoid drawn-out litigation. Peabody agreed earlier in March to cover about $1 billion in future coal mine cleanup costs with third-party bonds.

Ezra Holdings Ltd., a Singapore-listed offshore services group, filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. from hostile creditors as the energy support sector struggles from three years of weak oil prices, Bloomberg News reported today. Ezra and two affiliates, Ezra Marine Services Pte. and EMAS IT Solutions Pte., filed for chapter 11 protection on March 18 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York. Ezra listed consolidated long-term assets with a value of $1.3 billion and current assets of $623 million for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2016, according to court papers. Read more. 

The featured keynote at ABI's 2017 Annual Spring Meeting will be Spencer Abraham, former U.S. Senator and former U.S. Secretary of Energy. Additionally, a panel at the Annual Spring Meeting will be discussing legal and business developments in E&P cases. Click here to register! 

Get a better understanding of what happens when an oil, gas or other natural resources company goes bankrupt. Order your copy of ABI's revised and expanded When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy, Second Edition. 

A federal judge on Friday refused to throw out a challenge from an unhappy former lender to the chapter 11 plan that got Millennium Health LLC out of bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Voya Investment Management’s appeal of a ruling cutting off its right to sue over Millennium Health’s financial woes remains alive, in spite of a bankruptcy court confirmation decision, Judge Leonard Stark of the U.S. District Court for Delaware ruled. It’s not clear that the ruling will have any effect on Millennium, a drug-testing company which emerged from a clouded past and bankruptcy and remains in operation.