?Bank credit-facility redetermination is now in full season and, already, assets are coming onto market and yet more are to come.


• Delta Petroleum Corp. is hoping to sell some $150 million in equity at $3 a share to right its credit-facility shortcoming, but the stock price was just above $1 at press time. Its assets—in the Piceance and Paradox basins in the Rockies and on the Gulf Coast—are in play.


• Energy Partners Ltd. is upside down by $38 million in its credit facility. Founder Richard Bachmann has resigned, and investment-banking firm Parkman Whaling LLC has been brought in to work it out. Assets are on the Gulf Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.


• Deep Bossier darling Gastar Exploration Ltd. is down to $6 million of cash on hand and $52 million of its debt obligations mature this year. It also holds assets in the Marcellus play, and in Wyoming and Australia.


• GMX Resources Inc.’s largest shareholder, Centennial Energy Partners LLC, wants the producer to evaluate options. It has assets in the Haynesville in Louisiana and Bossier play in East Texas. And, Gasco Energy may sell or farm out some of its interests in the Riverbend project in the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah.


Some E&Ps have already filed for Chapter 11 creditor protection, including Hallwood Energy, which has shale-gas assets in the Arkoma and Delaware basins. Blackhill Partners LLC is its advisor.


• Edge Petroleum Corp., which failed to finance its reverse merger with Chaparral Energy Inc. in December, has assets in South Texas, South Louisiana, Alabama, Michigan, New Mexico and Arkansas’ Fayetteville. It has hired Parkman Whaling for the workout.


• Pacific Energy Resources Ltd. holds assets offshore California and Alaska. Its advisors are Lazard and Albrecht & Associates.


• BPI Energy Inc. has coalbed-methane rights in the Illinois Basin; Foothills Resources Inc. has properties in Texas, California and Oklahoma; Ausam Energy Corp. holds prospects in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas through its Noram Resources Inc. subsidiary; and CDX Gas LLC has operations in Appalachia, the Barnett, and the San Juan, Black Warrior and Arkoma basins. Its advisors are Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC and Jefferies Randall & Dewey.


• Platina Energy Group operates in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky and Wyoming, and Austin Chalk-focused Storm Cat Energy Corp. has hired Parkman Whaling and Alvarez & Marsal for a workout.


There is some news of opportunistic investments afield, though.


• Kayne Anderson Energy Funds, Kathy Hogenson and Bill Hogenson have formed Zone Energy LLC to buy U.S. onshore properties.


• HM Capital Partners LLC has invested in SunTerra Resources LLC to drill acreage controlled by other HM Capital portfolio companies, including BlackBrush Oil & Gas and TriDimension Energy.


Making headway in preparing for a continued capital drought are Stone Energy Corp. and Energy XXI Ltd., which have unwound some top-of-market hedges, leaving some upside on the table but taking the cash now to deploy it in a depressed market.


S. Wil VanLoh, a founder of energy private-equity firm Quantum Energy Partners, says in a sidebar to this issue’s cover story that public companies are contacting PE firms about rolling some assets into SPEs (special-purpose entities) to capture some cash.


Financial resources remain strong for most U.S. independent E&Ps. The last significant downturn was in 1998-99. The U.S. oil and gas industry knows how to work this out.
Read this issue. Get back to work.