Each one in plain English, with the numbers worked through for a shareholder.
10 Nov 2015bankruptcy or receivership▼ BadMajor
Far East Energy filed for Chapter 7 liquidation on 10 November 2015 after failing to sell or restructure itself, handing control to a trustee to sell off the assets. The filing defaulted every borrowing at once - $23.2 million on the 2011 facility, $10.8 million on the working capital loans and $89.1 million on the 13% notes, about $123 million in all - and both remaining officers ceased to hold office immediately. Fourteen years of Chinese coalbed methane exploration ended without commercial production.
Standard Chartered sold its position out of the 2011 facility to the same lender group behind the working capital loans, and the new holders extended the maturity to March 2016. The original bank was gone; the company's fate now sat with a single group of distressed lenders.
A $16.3 million unsecured facility was arranged, $8.8 million of it simply to refinance the three working capital loans taken since February. New money was being raised almost entirely to repay recent borrowing.
A thirteenth and final extension carried the bank loan to 8 October 2015 with interest deferred once more - the last of a year of month-by-month reprieves.
The February working capital loan was extended a second time and a third $4 million unsecured facility was taken from the same lenders - the company now rolling three separate stopgap loans at once.
With the bank loan unpayable, the company took a $1.4 million three-month unsecured working capital loan from a group of lenders - borrowing to keep the lights on rather than to drill.
For the first time the bank deferred the interest itself, not just the principal: the November payment was rolled into a new maturity of 31 December 2014. The company had stopped being able to service the loan at all.
The Standard Chartered facility was extended again, to April 2014, with interest now payable monthly instead of quarterly - a lender shortening its leash.
CUCBM extended Shouyang exploration to June 2016 over 1,103 square kilometres, but only in exchange for a commitment to drill at least 39 more wells - more time bought with spending the company had no obvious way to fund.
Far East Energy raised $60 million by selling senior secured notes of its Bermuda subsidiary plus warrants, at 13% cash interest or 14.5% if paid in more notes, maturing January 2016. It cleared the immediate bank problem, but committed a company with no revenue to a hard three-year deadline at a punishing rate. Those notes are the largest claim in its 2015 liquidation.
Standard Chartered granted another short deferral of principal and interest to mid-January while the company finished documenting a private placement of senior secured notes - the bank lending against a refinancing that had not closed yet.
Unable to repay at maturity, the company got Standard Chartered to push both the facility's termination date and the payment of all accrued interest out three weeks to 19 December 2012.
The company drew $2.6 million on the Standard Chartered facility and used its option to push the term out three months to November 2012 - the first sign that the nine-month loan would not be repaid on time.
The Shouyang exploration period was extended to June 2015 with Chinese government approval - the block that carried the gas sales contract and the bank loan now had three more years to deliver.
Beijing approved a deal under which Far East Energy handed back the Enhong block in Yunnan and kept the 483 square kilometre Laochang block, with more time to explore it. Ten years after signing for 1,072 square kilometres, the company was giving half of it back.
The Standard Chartered facility was amended to give the company more time to produce Chinese government approval of its production sharing contract extension, and chief executive Michael McElwrath's contract was extended. The loan was already dependent on approvals the company did not yet have.
