Bus. Devt: Bankruptcy: Opportunities and Pitfalls for Acquisitions

Buddy Clark is head of the Energy Practice Group focusing his practice for the last 30 years in oil and gas finance, representing banks, private capital providers and producers in secured and unsecured credit transactions and equity investments; transactional energy law, including oil and gas exploration, production and development, and midstream acquisitions, joint developments and partnerships; and energy related litigation and bankruptcies. He has recently completed his book on oil and gas lending titled “Oil Capital, The History of American Oil, Wildcatters, Independents and Their Bankers.”

Mr. Kaetzer has 34 years experience in the oil and gas industry; the first 15 years were with Texaco Inc., a year with Vastar/Arco  and the last 18 years managing, running and building independent exploration and production companies    At Texaco, he began his career working a few years as an operations engineer on Gulf of Mexico properties and then shifted to overseas projects; his last 7 years at Texaco were spent managing onshore operations and asset teams managing assets onshore in Louisiana and Texas.   Since 1997, he has been involved in building and managing independent production and development companies.   He began with a private company from 1997 thru 1999, then combined with Gulfwest Energy Inc. a small cap domestic oil and gas company with assets in south Louisiana, Texas and Colorado this was his first turn-around of an company and it was monetized in 2006.   From 2007 thru April 2010 he was president/CEO of Baseline Oil & Gas Corp which was also a small cap public company with assets in Texas and southern Indian.  Both public companies were financed thru a combination of high yield debt and equity.

From April 2010 joined Redbud E&P Inc as president/CEO;  Redbud was exiting bankruptcy and the lenders were seeking asset growth and a monetization.  This occurred in 2012 when the company was restructured and all debt retired.   Mr Kaetzer now owns Redbud E&P Inc, and the company has a minority interest and manages the oil and gas assets now owned primarily by a private equity company.    Redbud E&P Inc. has assets in southeast Oklahoma, eastern shelf of the PermianBasin, and PowderRiver Basin in Wyoming and produces approximately 17 mmcfpd and 100 bopd of gross production.

Mr Kaetzer is a graduate from TulaneUniversity with a Masters in Petroleum Engineering, and from the University of Illinois with a B.S. in Civil Engineering. 

John Redmond attended The University of Tulsa and received a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering in 1988 and an MBA in 1995. After graduation in 1988, he joined Conoco, Inc. where he worked as both a production and reservoir engineer in the Mid-Continent District based in Oklahoma City, OK. In 1991, he left Conoco to join Samson Resources Company in Tulsa, OK as a District Engineer, managing properties in the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles in addition to evaluating potential international transactions in Argentina, Russia, and India. Redmond left Samson in 1996 to become Vice President of Engineering for PITCO; a family owned Tulsa based oil and gas company. At PITCO he was responsible for all operational, engineering and exploration functions of the company and helped oversee the rapid growth of the firm from a $20 million company to a $100-$150 million company. Redmond left PITCO in 2003 to start AXIO Natural Resources, after raising $20 million in equity from Natural Gas Partners Fund VI. Tulsa based AXIO grew to be a $150 million company and sold to Chesapeake Energy in 2006. Shortly thereafter, Redmond and his team went on to start Bluestone Natural Resources with a $44 million equity commitment from management and Natural Gas Partners VIII. BlueStone built a portfolio of oil and gas assets located in South Texas which was ultimately sold to the public market with the 2011 initial public offering of Memorial Production Partners; a Houston based Master Limited Partnership. The BlueStone team and Natural Gas Partners Fund X formed BlueStone Natural Resources II with $114 million in equity in 2012. BlueStone II currently operates more than 1800 wells in South Texas and the Barnett Shale plays, employing more than 100 people in its Tulsa headquarters and various field offices throughout Texas. Redmond currently functions as President and Chief Executive Officer of BlueStone II. Additionally, Redmond serves on the Alumni Advisory Board of the Collins School of Business at the University of Tulsa.