Breitburn Energy Partner LP’s lost weekend of a bankruptcy—now in its 18th month—has generated A&D murmurs, not for the deal it made, but the potential transaction it let slip away.

In August, Diamondback Energy Inc. CEO Travis Stice offered to buy the company’s Midland Basin acreage for $675 million. In a letter, Stice framed the deal as immediate cash for Breitburn that would sidestep litigation costs.

Stice had a point—the company has racked up an estimated $113 million in administrative expenses and professional fees during its prolonged reorganization stay.

What struck creditors and Breitburn’s unitholders was the MLP’s seeming indifference to Stice’s offer. The company apparently sent no response to Diamondback, according to court documents.

In October, Diamondback bid on the Midland again, raising its offer to $725 million. Despite the $3.1-billion debt carried in its saddlebags, Breitburn fought off legal challenges to market its most valuable asset.

Attorneys for Breitburn’s seven largest unitholders said in court filings that management’s antipathy for a sales process had a purpose. In court documents, they accused company management of concealing an “undisclosed secret” negotiation for executive compensation and incentives.

While bargaining for millions in compensation, management was also shaping a reorganization plan with the same people who would ultimately pay them, the unitholders’ contend.

On Nov. 29, Breitburn won approval to begin working toward its plan to split the company into two businesses—one centers on the Midland position (working title PermianCo).

PermianCo will form around Breitburn’s Midland assets, which will be transferred to the RBL lenders for $775 million—about $50 million more than Diamondback’s October offer. Court records show Breitburn owns 17,660 net horizontal acres (91% average working interest), mostly in Howard and Martin counties, Texas.

The company’s remaining assets will form LegacyCo, a spin-off to be owned by the senior second lien note holders who hold claims of $793 million against Breitburn. LegacyCo’s assets include positions in the Midcontinent, Rockies, Florida and the Los Angeles Basin with average production of 20,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day—41% of the company’s total production.

The RBL lenders will also receive a 7.5% piece of LegacyCo.

On Nov. 30, after reviewing emails among Breitburn and attorneys, the unitholders’ lawyers fired off an objection to the bankruptcy plan. In it, they describe Breitburn’s pocket veto of the Diamondback offer, and other bids for for California and Michigan assets, as a deliberate move to favor one creditor.

Emails filed with the unitholders’ objection show Breitburn CEO Hal Washburn negotiated for a portion of LegacyCo ownership for the company’s executive team as well as continued employment.

Washburn and the company’s general counsel did not respond to emailed questions or phone messages. The unitholders’ attorneys also did not respond to a request for comment.

The emails suggest that from August onward, RBL lenders and Breitburn executives traded drafts of a management incentive plan (MIP). In a Nov. 14 court hearing, as unitholders’ attorneys asked for an open marketing process of the Midland assets, one attorney said he suspected Breitburn had an “undisclosed secret” MIP.

“Why hasn’t it been disclosed?”

The debtors dismissed the question as rank speculation. “It’s absolutely clear no such plan exists,” they said, adding that if a compensation plan was created, it would be disclosed.

Whether company executives and creditors played unfairly in bankruptcy, some version of this plan—set for a confirmation hearing Jan. 11, 2018- was always the most likely scenario.

Statistics from Haynes and Boone LLP’s Oct. 31 bankruptcy report, which catalogs E&P bankruptcies back to January 2015, bears this out. Of the $78.1 billion in debt sheltered in courthouses, just $6.1 billion was eliminated through asset sales. Debt-to-equity conversions dominate, disposing of $57.9 billion in obligations.

Did Breitburn deliberately miss a big payday by passing on a sale of its Midland assets? If so, it isn’t clear whether any proceeds would have gone to junior creditors or unitholders.

Bankruptcy judges aren’t naïve or overly optimistic people, University of Chicago law professor Douglas G. Baird wrote in a 1998 article. Jurists “know the players firsthand and have seen more than their share of stupidity, cupidity and fraud,” he said.

The objective of bankruptcy is survival, Baird said, and evaluating the effectiveness of bankruptcy can’t be done “merely by counting” the number of successfully reorganized companies.

By such standards, Breitburn looks like a survivor. But it may find its own challenges in counting the cost of success.