CIRI and AIX close to settlement

Cook Inlet Region Inc. and AIX Energy LLC have tentatively agreed to a settlement that would resolve legal disputes related to the bankruptcy case of Buccaneer Energy Ltd.

CIRI had initially leased land to Buccaneer for use at its Kenai Loop field before revoking the lease. The lease subsequently became involved in a correlative rights dispute over the onshore gas field in the northern Kenai Peninsula near the city of Kenai.

Those cases were playing out before the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and state court. The cases had continued to hang over the bankruptcy proceedings.

In November, a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas allowed Buccaneer to sell nearly all of its Alaska assets to AIX Energy LLC, which had been Buccaneer’s largest creditor.

“CIRI, AIX and the other parties in the Alaskan state court litigation have agreed in principle to a comprehensive settlement of that litigation under which all parties will dismiss their claims against each other,” attorneys for CIRI and AIX wrote in a Dec. 15 notice to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. Given that the court has approved other settlements during the case, the attorneys said they expect the court will also approve the current settlement, once the parties finalize the document.

- Eric Lidji