SemGroup woes have ripple effect

The Tulsa-based oil trading, storage and transportation company filed for bankruptcy late last month.

Small businesses and independent oil producers in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas find themselves caught in the ripples from the spreading SemGroup LP bankruptcy.

SemGroup buys, sells, stores and transports crude oil and crude oil products. The Tulsa-based company, the 12th-largest privately held company in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization on July 22.


Numerous Wichita-area and Kansas companies are on the 900-page list of creditors that SemGroup filed with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. Company officials said it owes at least $2.52 billion just to its lenders.

“I think the greatest fear out there is that this is not an anomaly; that it might be the first of more to come,” said Ed Cross, executive vice president of the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association.

The Wichita Eagle

(SemGroup went bankrupt because they were shorting oil as a hedge, and couldn’t cover when prices spiked to record levels.)