Texas Judge Says You Don't Have to Act Rashly to Value a Truck

Western District of Texas Bankruptcy Judge Tony Davis has written a very helpful opinion on valuing a truck in a chapter 13 case.   The ten page opinion is packed with extensive footnotes as well as practical guidelines.   In the end, the valuation issue depended on burden of proof and the relatively weak evidence offered by the debtor prevailed.    In re Solis, No. 15-11181 (Bankr. W.D. Tex. 4/15/16).    The opinion can be found here .

Pre-Packaged Plan Clears Confirmation in Fifteen Days

Shakespeare bemoaned "the law's delay."   Dickens brought us Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, a case spanning generations.   However, a new Chapter 11 case  filed in Corpus Christi demonstrated the opposite of delay, blazing from petition to confirmation in just fifteen days.    Case No. 16-20111, In re Southcross Holdings, LP (Bankr. S.D. Tex. 2016).     The case is all the more remarkable because it involved an energy sector debtor that did not rely on a section 363 sale, but actually raised new capital and restructured its debts.     

About the Debtors

The Southcross entities consist of two halves of a broad, interconnected enterprise providing services across the midstream oil and gas sector.   The Debtor entities, which are shown in blue in the chart below comprise the holding company portion of the corporate structure, while the non-debtor affiliates, shown in salmon below, carry out the operations.    The Debtors own a 2% general partner interest and a 60% limited partnership interest in Southcross Energy Partners, LP, a publicly traded master limited partnership (MLP).    

Southcross owns and operates approximately 4,000 miles of pipelines, two sour gas treating facilities, three processing facilities, two fractionating facilities, and one facility with both processing and fractionating capabilities. The Southcross assets that are owned by the Debtors are located in the Eagle Ford shale in South Texas (the “Eagle Ford”) and include approximately 880 miles of natural gas gathering and NGL transportation pipeline, one sour gas treating facility, and one fractionating facility.

Declaration of Jeffery J. Stegenga, p. 3,  Dkt. No. 8.