Overview
While some larger restructuring firms bring bankruptcy expertise they often stumble on the oil and gas issues that drive value and risk in energy cases. It is not uncommon for regional energy firms to understand the assets but lack bankruptcy court experience. We bridge that gap, fielding teams that combine sophisticated bankruptcy litigation capability with the deep oil and gas knowledge that only comes from decades of industry focus.
Most bankruptcy lawyers learn oil and gas issues on the fly. Most oil and gas lawyers avoid bankruptcy court. We do both and have for years. When energy assets are in play, the stakes are too high for lawyers who are learning on your dime.
This dual capability matters because oil and gas bankruptcies don’t follow the standard restructuring playbook. Mineral leases have habendum clauses that can terminate assets mid-case. JOA obligations create administrative expense exposure that affects plan feasibility. Plugging liabilities can dwarf the value of producing assets. Regulatory requirements limit what a debtor can reject and what a buyer can avoid. Generalist restructuring lawyers often miss these issues until they become expensive problems.
We’ve navigated these complexities on every side of the table. We represent strategic bidders and stalking horse bidders through Section 363 sales, structuring acquisitions that capture value while properly allocating plugging liabilities and managing successor liability exposure. We represent DIP lenders in structuring facilities, negotiating adequate protection, and enforcing their rights when debtors fail to perform. And when a JOA partner, lessee, or contract counterparty files for bankruptcy, we move fast to protect our clients’ positions, whether that means challenging assumption and assignment of executory contracts, asserting administrative expense priority, or seeking relief from the automatic stay.
Our adversary proceeding experience runs deep. We’ve battled preference actions, fraudulent transfer claims, lease rejection disputes, and contract assumption fights in bankruptcy courts across Texas. When disputes arise over whether leases terminated pre-petition, whether environmental liabilities can be shed, or how JOA obligations ride through a sale, we bring the same technical mastery to bankruptcy court that we bring to state and federal trial courts. Opposing counsel and their restructuring specialists rarely match our depth in the underlying oil and gas issues that actually drive these disputes.
