CIE parent works financing deal

Tennessee-based Miller Energy Resources Inc., parent company of Anchorage-based Cook Inlet Energy LLC, on June 29 announced it had secured $100 million in new financing.

The financing comes in the form of a five-year “credit facility” with Apollo Investment Corp. of New York.

The credit facility, which provides for an initial borrowing base of $55 million, is secured by “substantially all” of the company’s assets, Miller said.

Miller plans to use the financing to pay off existing debt and to “fund development of oil production both onshore and offshore in Alaska through the drilling of new wells and the reworking of previously producing oil wells.”

Miller subsidiary Cook Inlet Energy is a small oil and gas producer and explorer on the remote west side of Alaska’s Cook Inlet. It operates the West McArthur River oil field and the Osprey offshore platform in the Redoubt unit.

The company is mounting a new drilling rig atop the Osprey platform. The rig is expected to go to work soon bringing the RU-1 well back online by replacing its failed electric submersible pump. The well previously produced about 350 barrels per day.

Cook Inlet Energy then plans workovers on four more shut-in Osprey wells that previously produced a combined 2,000 barrels per day.

“With funding secured, we can continue to execute our ambitious business plan to aggressively ramp up our production over the next year through low-risk development,” said Scott Boruff, Miller Energy chief executive.

He noted that Apollo has “considerable oil and gas expertise.”

Miller shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

—Wesley Loy