Oil and Gas

Green Field asset sale called ‘largest disposition industry has seen'

by Leslie Turk

Equipment includes more than 3,500 new and late model units valued at more than $250 million.

Boston-based Gordon Brothers Group, a global advisory, restructuring and investment firm specializing in the industrial, consumer products and retail sectors, is selling Lafayette-based Green Field Energy Services entire portfolio of equipment and inventory assets.

Lafayette businessman Mike Moreno's Green Field Energy Services, a well service provider specializing in turbine-powered hydraulic fracturing services, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October. The assets, including late model well services and hydraulic fracturing equipment valued at more than $250 million, are being marketed for immediate sale by Gordon Brothers Group, the entity announced in a press release Tuesday after receiving sale order approval by the bankruptcy court in Delaware.

Gordon Brothers Group says the equipment its Commercial & Industrial Division acquired consists of more than 3,500 pieces of new and late model, well-maintained, low-hour and low-mile units, including trucking and transportation equipment, a broad assortment of sand handling, well stimulation and cementing equipment, as well as hydration units, high-pressure manifolds, electronic data control vans and lab test equipment. In addition, the acquired assets include about 40 new and late model FMC, OFM and SPM tri-plex pump power ends and fluid ends and a variety of late model trailer pump and support units for well services applications.

Green Field Energy Services equipment, much of which has for months sat idle at the old Fruit of the Loom site on Hwy. 14 in Abbeville, is being marketed for sale as part of bankruptcy liquidation of the company's assets.

The fleet of hydraulic fracturing equipment includes some of the most advanced machinery in the industry, such as 27 double pump mounted, TIER 4 emissions capable (2 pumps per trailer) high-pressure fracturing pumps with multi-fuel (including onsite natural gas) turbine power, electronic control systems and auxiliary diesel turbine starters.

"Gordon Brothers Group provided an ideal solution for Green Field and our creditors as they took sole control of a very large and diverse portfolio of equipment involved in this transaction," Rick Fontova, president of Green Field Energy Services, said in the announcement.

"We have more than 3,500 pieces of new and late model machinery and equipment immediately available for sale in both Louisiana and Pennsylvania representing the largest disposition project that this industry has seen," Robert Maroney, co-president of Gordon Brothers Group's Commercial & Industrial Division said in announcing the sale. "In addition to a wide range of state-of-the-art low hour and low mile units specific to hydraulic fracturing and well services, we have also acquired an exceptional package of portable power generation units and related tractors, trailers and light-duty trucks."

As ABiz reported earlier this week, Green Field creditors retained their right to sue Moreno in the new liquidation plan.

Green Field's failure is a major blow to the once-high-flying businessman - a Cuban immigrant who grew up in Morgan City and earned an MBA from UL Lafayette.

The entrepreneur, who is in his mid-40s, served as chairman and CEO of the private company, having led the group that purchased Lafayette businessman John Egle's Hub City Industries in mid-2011, changing its name to Green Field - which was soon boasting that it was years ahead of its competition in the use of natural gas to run its hydraulic fracturing equipment (claiming it could even pipe the hydrocarbon directly from the wellhead). The company also offered cementing, coiled tubing, pressure pumping, acidizing and other pumping services. Its major competitors were the big boys of the oilfield services industry: Halliburton, Schlumberger and Baker Hughes.

After the bankruptcy filing, Green Field's Fontova told the Houston Chronicle that the company started offering its fracturing services at a time when competitors were expanding and other companies were entering the market, creating an immediate glut in equipment. "Back in 2011 in this market, the demand far exceeded the supply and margins were much higher, which was how we entered the market," Fontova told the newspaper. "But very quickly the conditions changed to where there was an oversupply."

Specific equipment inquiries should be directed to Maureen Henderson from Gordon Brothers Group's Commercial & Industrial Division at (617) 422-7832 or [email protected].