Submissions involving Bankruptcy or Business Closures

The FracFocus Support staff has been asked how to manage bankruptcy/business closures of well owners in relationship to FracFocus disclosure submissions. A survey of State Regulators was performed, and the following guidelines were developed. These guidelines are to provide Operators, Service Companies, and Regulators a means to communicate the issues for an instance when a disclosure has not been submitted.

Issue:

A Hydraulic Fracturing job was performed on a well and the disclosure has not been submitted to FracFocus, and one or both of the principals (i.e., Operating Company or Service Company) involved in the job has gone out of business.

FIRST: For definitive guidance always consult the state agency for which the disclosure is being submitted.

SECOND: Consider the following steps as a guidance to perform a disclosure submission to FracFocus when there is a bankruptcy or business closure involved:

When the well is purchased/acquired by another operator, the purchasing company should go to the Service Company and acquire the disclosure information and submit.
If the well is not purchased/acquired, then the Regulatory Agency may go to the Service Company and get the data for submission. (FracFocus Admins can assist Regulators in accessing the system for data submission)
If the service company is bankrupt but the operator is not, then it is the operator's responsibility to submit the best-known data to FracFocus with comment on completeness of the data. (Discuss with your Regulator)
If both the service company and operator are out of business the Regulator should contact the FracFocus Admins to assess if there is a pending record in the system for the job.
If both the service company and operator are out of business and there is no/limited data, then FracFocus Admins will assist the Regulators to enter a shell record in FracFocus to identify the missing information.

LASTLY: For definitive guidance consult the state agency for which the disclosure is being submitted.

Find links to your state here: Regulations

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