White Forest Resources sold one of its two West Virginia coal mines, failed to sell the other, and ended in chapter 7 liquidation roughly 200 days after it sought bankruptcy protection. The Central Appalachian producer of metallurgical and thermal coal filed chapter 11 petitions for itself and ten affiliates in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on February 7, 2025, carrying about $79 million of funded and trade debt and a lender group that controlled the financing from day one.
The case ran on a dual track: a quick section 363 sale of the Raven Crest thermal-coal complex and an attempted reorganization or sale of the South Fork metallurgical-coal mine. Raven Crest sold to Eagle Horizon Resources, LLC and closed on April 18, 2025, but the South Fork transaction never closed. Facing administrative insolvency and an imminent maturity of its postpetition loans, the debtors asked Judge Thomas M. Horan to convert all eleven cases to chapter 7, and he entered the conversion order on August 25, 2025, leaving reclamation obligations and unpaid state environmental penalties unresolved.
White Forest Resources, Inc. (and 10 affiliated debtors)
Headquarters
Ashford, West Virginia
Industry
Coal mining (metallurgical and thermal)
Operating Mines
South Fork (Greenbrier County); Raven Crest (Boone and Kanawha Counties)
Ownership
Majority owned by funds managed by Spectrum Group Management LLC
Petition Date
February 7, 2025
Court
U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware
Lead Case Number
25-10195 (jointly administered)
Judge
Thomas M. Horan
Funded and Trade Debt
~$58.2M secured (2017, 2020, Aegis) plus ~$20.7M trade payables (~$79M)
DIP Financing
Superpriority term loan and revolver from the prepetition lender group
Raven Crest Sale
Eagle Horizon Resources, LLC; closed April 18, 2025 (~$21M total consideration)
South Fork Sale
WFR Acquisition, LLC ($1M credit bid); not consummated
Conversion to Chapter 7
August 25, 2025 (~200 days)
Debtors' Counsel
Chipman Brown Cicero & Cole, LLP
Chief Restructuring Officer
Brian Ryniker, RK Consultants LLC
Investment Banker
Sonoran Capital Advisors, LLC
Claims and Administrative Agent
Stretto, Inc.
Committee Counsel
Raines Feldman Littrell LLP
Committee Financial Advisor
Force Ten Partners, LLC
Chapter 7 Trustee
Jeoffrey L. Burtch
Trustee's Counsel
Cozen O'Connor
Case Snapshot
A Two-Mine Coal Platform Under Spectrum Ownership
White Forest Resources, Inc. is a Delaware corporation and the direct or indirect parent of the other debtors, majority owned by Spectrum Group Management LLC through its investment funds. The company described itself in its first-day declaration as a privately held producer of premium metallurgical and thermal coal in the Central Appalachian coal basin, running two operating complexes in West Virginia from a headquarters in Ashford.
The South Fork operations sit in Greenbrier County and control more than 36,000 leased acres, where the debtors mined premium mid-volatile metallurgical coal through contour, area, and highwall methods and produced 304,094 tons in 2024 through November. South Fork coal moved by truck to the Clearco preparation plant and then by CSX rail out of the New River Freight District, and the South Fork entity held ten active Article III mining permits from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.
The Raven Crest operations span Boone and Kanawha Counties across more than 26,000 leased acres and produced 197,356 tons of primarily thermal coal in 2024 through November, shipping from the Bull Creek preparation plant via CSX out of the Kanawha Freight District. Raven Crest Contracting held sixteen active WVDEP mining permits, and both complexes carried reclamation obligations backed by surety bonds.
The corporate footprint traces back to Xinergy Corp., a Central Appalachian coal producer that acquired Raven Crest Mining, LLC in 2010, filed its own chapter 11 in 2015, and emerged in February 2016 under the White Forest Resources name. The lineage is visible in the eleven jointly administered debtors, whose names still carry the Xinergy and Raven Crest identities from prior transactions.
Case Number
Debtor Entity
25-10195
White Forest Resources, Inc. (lead)
25-10196
Xinergy Corp.
25-10197
Xinergy of West Virginia, Inc.
25-10198
Shenandoah Energy, LLC
25-10199
South Fork Coal Company, LLC
25-10200
Raven Crest Mining, LLC
25-10201
Bull Creek Processing Company, LLC
25-10202
Brier Creek Coal Company, LLC
25-10203
Raven Crest Contracting, LLC
25-10204
Raven Crest Leasing, LLC
25-10205
Raven Crest Minerals, LLC
The court granted joint administration of the eleven cases under the lead White Forest docket while preserving each debtor's separate legal existence, an arrangement the company requested in its first-day pleadings. Approximately 125 full- and part-time employees, none of them unionized, worked almost entirely at the two mines as of the petition date.
The $79 Million Debt Stack and Path to Filing
The debtors entered chapter 11 obligated on three secured credit facilities layered over years of out-of-court restructuring. The 2017 prepetition credit agreement, which Xinergy Corp. signed in May 2017 to fund a highwall miner and later expanded in 2019 to facilitate an out-of-court restructuring, carried roughly $27.4 million of principal at the petition date; its administrative agent had been changed in 2024 from Cantor Fitzgerald Securities to Spectrum Origination LLC, an affiliate of the controlling equity sponsor.
The 2020 prepetition credit agreement, also agented by Spectrum Origination LLC, stood at about $29.4 million and had been amended ten times, in the debtors' words to provide additional liquidity to keep operating in the face of recent setbacks. A 2021 asset-based revolver from Aegis Business Credit, LLC added roughly $1.411 million. Together the secured facilities totaled about $58.2 million, and with approximately $20.7 million of trade payables the filing-era stack reached the roughly $79 million figure reported when the case began.
Beyond the funded debt, South Fork and Raven Crest Minerals owed unpaid West Virginia severance and reclamation taxes for 2019 through 2024, had entered offers of compromise for the earlier years, and faced state tax liens. The United States separately filed a civil action to collect unpaid federal surface-mining civil penalties and reclamation fee debts against the companies in February 2025. The debtors also operated under material coal, loadout, and surface leases with Penn Virginia Operating Co., LLC, obligations that would later shape the Raven Crest sale.
The operating picture was deteriorating before the filing. For 2024 through November the debtors reported negative EBITDA of roughly $3.55 million on about $80.3 million of coal-sales revenue, with results highly dependent on production costs and on CSX rail capacity that severe weather, rail stoppages, and equipment availability could disrupt. Contemporary reporting tied the immediate liquidity crisis to a cascade of late-2024 operational failures and a January 2025 federal shutdown of mining at the Rocky Run Surface Mine, which eliminated cash flow while fixed costs continued.
Lender-Controlled DIP Financing and the Committee's "Land-Grab" Objection
On the petition date the debtors filed a combined cash-collateral and debtor-in-possession financing motion built around the existing lender group rather than a third-party lender. The package proposed a term-loan facility of up to $15.333 million and a revolver of up to the lesser of the borrowing base or $4 million, with $8.333 million of new-money term lending alongside a $7 million roll-up of 2020 credit-agreement debt and a roll-up of the roughly $1.412 million Aegis revolver balance into the postpetition structure.
The court approved the financing on an interim basis on February 11, 2025, and entered a final DIP and cash-collateral order on March 12. The final order locked in an aggressive milestone schedule: a disclosure statement and plan by April 11, a Raven Crest sale order within 75 days of the petition date, and plan confirmation within 120 days unless the lenders agreed otherwise, all backed by budget compliance, lender credit-bid rights, a professional-fee carve-out, and a challenge period for the roll-ups and adequate-protection liens.
The official committee of unsecured creditors fought the structure. In a March objection it characterized the financing as a lender-driven "land-grab," arguing that the challenge-period and investigation funding were inadequate and that the milestones and waivers steered the case toward liquidation rather than a viable reorganization. Trade press echoed the dispute, with the committee publicly calling the chapter 11 loans an insider deal.
The financing needed more runway as the case wore on. A June 27 amendment added $2.5 million of new-money term debt in staged advances, raised the revolver cap to $5.5 million, extended the scheduled termination date to 165 days after the petition date, imposed South Fork sale milestones, and charged an $83,333.34 extension fee. A second amendment on July 28 pushed the scheduled termination date out again to 195 days and tied repayment of the remaining equipment-related revolver exposure to a South Fork closing.
Raven Crest Sale and South Fork Failure
The first and only completed transaction was the section 363 sale of the Raven Crest assets. The sale motion described Raven Crest as a Boone and Kanawha County platform controlling more than 26,000 leased acres, tied to a preparation plant and loadout, and marketed it under a stalking-horse agreement with Eagle Horizon Resources, LLC. The motion set the stalking-horse package at least $11.25 million in cash, subject to an offset and a coal-inventory adjustment, with total consideration expected to exceed $21.25 million once assumed liabilities, including more than $10 million of assumed reclamation obligations, were counted, and it sought a $700,000 breakup fee plus up to $400,000 of expense reimbursement.
No competing bid materialized. On April 7 the debtors cancelled the auction and designated Eagle Horizon as the successful bidder after no other qualified bid arrived. The court entered the Raven Crest sale order on April 11, authorizing a transfer free and clear of liens with encumbrances attaching to proceeds, limiting the buyer to expressly assumed liabilities, and conditioning closing on items including continued effectiveness of the Penn Virginia leases and a reclamation-liabilities agreement with the WVDEP.
The failed South Fork sale. The debtors initially planned to reorganize around South Fork but ultimately marketed it in a second section 363 sale. The June 27 South Fork sale motion acknowledged that confirmation of a chapter 11 plan was no longer feasible because of an unforeseen liquidity crunch and pitched an expedited section 363 sale as the best route to preserve going-concern value, jobs, and vendor relationships, setting a competing-bid deadline in July and an auction date if needed.
The stalking horse was WFR Acquisition, LLC, an affiliate of the DIP lenders and prepetition creditors, offering a $1 million credit bid against 2020 prepetition debt plus the assumption of specified liabilities, economics well below the Raven Crest result. No competing bid emerged, and the debtors could not finalize even the affiliate transaction.
The Environmental Stay-Relief Fight
A coalition of conservation groups injected a non-financial dispute into the case. In April 2025 the Center for Biological Diversity, Appalachian Voices, Greenbrier River Watershed Association, Kanawha Forest Coalition, Sierra Club, and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy moved for relief from the automatic stay so they could continue pending federal-court litigation over a U.S. Forest Service road-use permit that allowed South Fork to haul coal through the Monongahela National Forest. They argued the challenge targeted federal agency action and that, in any event, cause existed because the permit's validity affected estate administration and asset value. The court granted the stay relief motion on June 17, 2025, permitting the groups to pursue related surface mining reclamation proceedings.
That fight sat atop years of regulatory friction. Reporting documented a long environmental violation history at the company's West Virginia operations, and in December 2024, two months before the filing, conservation groups had sued South Fork Coal over alleged Clean Water Act and surface-mining violations. Earlier litigation in 2023 had targeted federal agencies for failing to protect imperiled Appalachian species from coal-mining pollution.
Conversion to Chapter 7 Liquidation
By mid-August the dual-track strategy had ended. The August 15 conversion motion told the court that Raven Crest had sold and closed but the South Fork transaction could not be consummated, that the debtors had received no competing South Fork bids despite extensions, had idled the South Fork mine and furloughed most remaining employees, and were administratively insolvent with no reasonable likelihood of rehabilitation as the August 21 DIP maturity approached.
Judge Horan's conversion order, entered August 25, made the conversion effective on the earlier of a docket notice or August 29 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern, required turnover of estate books and records to the interim chapter 7 trustee, set a September 12 deadline for final chapter 11 fee applications, and discharged chapter 11 professionals except for limited wind-down work. It also required Stretto to docket a final claims register and provided stay relief to let Utica Leaseco proceed against its collateral after trustee appointment.
The conversion drew limited objections rather than outright opposition. Utica Leaseco objected only in part, reserving rights to its equipment collateral and seeking inspection and eventual stay relief, while Des Nedhe Resources reserved state-law rights in response to the proposed conversion language. The court appointed Jeoffrey L. Burtch as chapter 7 trustee, and the trustee later sought to retain Cozen O'Connor as counsel to liquidate the estates and investigate prepetition transactions. Trade coverage framed the outcome plainly: White Forest would liquidate in chapter 7 after the failed mine sale.
Professional Fees and the Final Report
The conversion compressed the fee process into the fall. Final applications sought at least $449,344.00 in fees plus $2,836.53 in expenses for committee counsel Raines Feldman Littrell LLP; $226,051.50 plus $262.45 for debtors' special counsel Babst, Calland, Clements and Zomnir, P.C.; $75,120.00 for special counsel Jones & Associates; $200,000.00 plus $1,650.24 for investment banker Sonoran Capital Advisors; and $28,523.93 for Stretto. The court had earlier granted Raines an interim award of $292,332.00 in fees and $2,048.53 in expenses on August 1.
On October 2, 2025 the court entered an omnibus order granting the final fee applications. The final report and account showed how little chapter 11 liquidity remained: as of the conversion date the main City National Bank operating account held $366,423.09, a debtor professional-fee reserve held $770,467.00, a committee professional-fee reserve held $236,000.00, and the Raven Crest sale reserve was zero, with balances above roughly $300,000 in the main account swept to the DIP term lenders. The report added that the debtors had been unable to sell the remaining assets and had not analyzed the value of the unsold residual assets and claims.
Reclamation Liabilities Left Behind
The liquidation left West Virginia's reclamation system exposed. The state has acknowledged that its mine-reclamation bonding system is under severe strain, and the closure of operators without completed cleanup shifts costs to surety bonds, the Special Reclamation Fund, and ultimately taxpayers. White Forest's own filings disclosed reclamation obligations and surety bonds at both mines, but the chapter 7 estate held only nominal cash.
The White Forest outcome fits a documented pattern in Appalachian coal. Thermal-coal demand has fallen with the shift away from coal-fired power, and even comparatively stable metallurgical-coal markets depend on global steel demand that has moved toward Asian production. Research from West Virginia University has examined how coal mine bankruptcies and ownership changes affect operational and environmental outcomes across the industry. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research has documented broad household financial harm across coal communities as production has declined, the backdrop against which a 125-employee operator like White Forest exhausted its options.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is White Forest Resources?
White Forest Resources, Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated, West Virginia-based coal company that produced premium metallurgical coal at its South Fork mine in Greenbrier County and primarily thermal coal at its Raven Crest mine in Boone and Kanawha Counties. As its first-day declaration explained, the company was majority owned by investment funds managed by Spectrum Group Management LLC and employed about 125 people across eleven affiliated entities, including the legacy Xinergy and Raven Crest companies.
Why did White Forest Resources file for bankruptcy?
The company entered chapter 11 on February 7, 2025 carrying roughly $79 million of secured and trade debt against deteriorating operations. Its filing papers reported about $80.3 million of 2024 coal-sales revenue through November but negative EBITDA of roughly $3.55 million, and the 2020 credit facility had been amended ten times to fund continued operations. Contemporary reporting also tied the liquidity crisis to late-2024 operational failures and a January 2025 federal shutdown of mining at the Rocky Run Surface Mine.
Did White Forest sell its coal mines?
Partly. The debtors closed a section 363 sale of the Raven Crest thermal-coal assets to Eagle Horizon Resources, LLC on April 18, 2025, for total consideration of more than $21 million including assumed reclamation liabilities. The planned sale of the South Fork metallurgical-coal mine to a lender affiliate, WFR Acquisition, LLC, for a $1 million credit bid drew no competing bids and was never consummated.
How did the chapter 11 case end?
After the South Fork sale failed and the debtors became administratively insolvent ahead of their DIP maturity, they moved to convert the cases to chapter 7. Judge Thomas M. Horan entered the conversion order on August 25, 2025, roughly 200 days after the petition, and Jeoffrey L. Burtch was appointed chapter 7 trustee.
Why did the creditors' committee object to the financing?
The official committee of unsecured creditors objected to the DIP and cash-collateral package, calling it a lender-driven "land-grab." It argued the financing rolled up prepetition debt, provided inadequate funding and time for an investigation, and imposed milestones that pointed the case toward liquidation rather than reorganization, a position trade press described as the committee calling the loans an insider deal.
Who pays for the mine cleanup?
The chapter 7 estate held only nominal cash, so reclamation at the White Forest mines depends largely on surety bonds and, to the extent those fall short, on West Virginia's Special Reclamation Fund. State officials have warned that the bonding system is under severe strain, and reporting shows the company entered liquidation with delinquent state environmental penalties still outstanding.
acquired Raven Crest Mining, LLC in 2010 https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/xinergy-announces-completion-of-acquisition-of-raven-crest-mining-llc-539768772.html
emerged in February 2016 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/xinergy-corp-completes-restructuring-emerges-000000893.html
$79 million figure https://www.law360.com/bankruptcy-authority/articles/2295845/w-virginia-coal-miner-hits-ch-11-with-79m-debt-sale-plans
civil action to collect unpaid federal surface-mining civil penalties https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/united-states-files-civil-action-collect-unpaid-civil-penalties-and-reclamation-fee-debts
cascade of late-2024 operational failures https://appvoices.org/2025/02/18/south-fork-coal-company-bankruptcy-filing/
calling the chapter 11 loans an insider deal https://www.law360.com/bankruptcy-authority/articles/2308379/white-forest-committee-calls-ch-11-loans-insider-deal
sell the mine for about $21 million https://www.law360.com/bankruptcy-authority/articles/2324021/white-forest-gets-ok-to-sell-coal-mine-for-21m-in-ch-11
granted the stay relief motion https://appvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/351-White-Forest-Resources-Order-Granting-Allegheny-Blue-Ridge-et-al-Stay-Relief-Motion-02134064.pdf
long environmental violation history https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/wv-coal-firm-had-long-environmental-violation-history-before-bankruptcy-cases-stopped/article_df54590f-3b68-474b-96a8-9529a034b96c.html
sued South Fork Coal https://appvoices.org/2024/12/16/south-fork-coal-lawsuit/
failing to protect imperiled Appalachian species https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/lawsuit-filed-to-save-imperiled-appalachian-species-from-coal-mining-2023-11-08/
acknowledged that its mine-reclamation bonding system is under severe strain https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2020/04/west-virginia-admits-its-coal-mine-reclamation-bonding-system-brink-collapse
carried millions of dollars in delinquent state environmental penalties https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/chronic-environmental-violator-coal-firms-have-7m-in-delinquent-dep-penalty-debt/article_002792c6-9064-4ff9-bc2a-ebaad83dd969.html
liquidation limbo had amassed a six-figure delinquent WVDEP fine https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/coal-company-in-liquidation-limbo-has-amassed-six-figure-delinquent-dep-fine-debt/article_75698448-9683-41db-af78-c37be94c13dc.html
metallurgical-coal markets depend on global steel demand https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-mid-year-update-2025/overview
coal mine bankruptcies and ownership changes https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1254&context=econ_working-papers
broad household financial harm across coal communities https://www.nber.org/papers/w31072
This article was researched and written with AI assistance, using court filings, public records, and news sources. AI-generated content can contain errors. Verify all information against primary sources before relying on it. This is not legal or financial advice. See the disclaimer.