(Valor Feb. 20, 2025) With a debt of R$3.3 billion, Seacrest Petróleo filed for bankruptcy protection in the Court of Justice of São Paulo. The company is seeking to suspend collection proceedings and early maturity of the debt for a period of 180 days.
The decision to file came after the company received requests for collection of a debt of R$3 million from Houlihan Lokey, who was Seacrest’s financial advisor. In addition, there are financial disputes with essential suppliers, such as Petrobras – the Brazilian company managed to overturn the injunction that prevented it from collecting an invoice of US$ 70 million.
In the case of Houlihan, the dispute is not with the former client, but with the new shareholders, creditors who took over the company in January and were precisely the counterparty with whom the financial advisor was renegotiating. Once in possession of the company, the creditors blocked payment for the service. “After becoming shareholders, the banks refused to pay the suppliers involved in the renegotiation,” says a source.
Meanwhile, Petrobras, the company’s largest creditor, is collecting a debt related to the outstanding installments from the sale of fields in Espírito Santo. Seacrest claims that it does not have the financial means to cover such expenses and that this could accelerate other debts of the group.
At the end of December, the company filed a lawsuit with the Court of Justice of the State of Rio de Janeiro (TJ-RJ) alleging a breach of contract by Petrobras. According to Seacrest, the state-owned company had not carried out repairs to underwater pipelines, which was included in the purchase and sale agreement for the onshore fields, which Petrobras disputes.
The creditors who took over the company this year executed a debt of US$ 300 million and changed the company’s management. The amount referred to financing contracted with a syndicate of banks, coordinated by Morgan Stanley, for the purchase of the Norte Capixaba field. The banks transferred the shares as collateral to Geribá, which took over the business. On February 19, the company also announced the conversion of US$28.7 million in bonds into shares.
Seacrest is a Norwegian company, headquartered in Bermuda and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange in Norway. Bankruptcy request includes the subsidiaries Seacrest Petróleo Norte Capixaba and Seacrest Petróleo Cricaré Bermuda, as well as the foreign-based company Seacrest Urugay.
The group was founded in 2019 and made transactions with Petrobras for Norte Capixaba and Cricaré in 2021 and 2023. The company had an ambitious drilling program of 300 wells in northern Espírito Santo, with the goal of tripling its production by 2025. However, with the increase in operating costs and the drop in oil prices, the company saw its profit margins shrink.
The group also mentions in the petition, signed by the TWK law firm, that the increase in interest rates, political instability and lack of regulatory predictability have affected the investment environment in the oil and gas market, reducing the interest of foreign partners and directly impacting the raising of new resources. As the financial situation worsened, Seacrest began to delay payments to suppliers and the payment of bonds issued abroad.
In the third quarter, Seacrest produced 6.8 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/day) and has approximately 300 direct employees and more than a thousand indirect employees at the Cricaré Hub, Polo Norte Capixaba and Terminal Norte Capixaba.
Brazil Energy Insight 
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