Wilson Creek Energy, LLC and its affiliated debtors — Pennsylvania-based metallurgical coal producers operating as subsidiaries of Corsa Coal Corp. — filed chapter 11 petitions on January 6, 2025, in the Western District of Pennsylvania, ran a fast-tracked section 363 sale of substantially all assets, and had their chapter 11 cases dismissed on June 18, 2025 after the sale closed and the DIP lender was paid in full.
The Debtors operated six underground and surface mines across Somerset County, Pennsylvania and Garrett County, Maryland, two coal preparation plants, employed roughly 365 people, and produced approximately one million tons of metallurgical coal annually for domestic and international steel and coke customers from a reserve base of roughly 38 million clean, recoverable tons. The filing was precipitated by deteriorating metallurgical coal markets, with 2024 pricing falling below mining costs, compounded by adverse underground geology that raised costs and cut output throughout 2024. Liquidity was further strained by the failure to close a planned $25 million USDA-backed refinancing with Madison One CUSO, LLC following that lender's acquisition, and by exhausted efforts to restructure under the Main Street Lending Program. KeyBank National Association imposed mandatory prepayments and milestones the Debtors could not meet, pushing them toward a strategic sale process (Harrigan First Day DeclarationDkt. 28; Amended Harrigan DeclarationDkt. 51).
The prepetition capital structure centered on a $16.3 million senior secured Main Street Facility administered by KeyBank, bearing first-priority liens on substantially all non-real-property assets, sitting alongside an LSQ Funding Group receivables facility — first lien on purchased receivables, advances up to 85% of eligible receivables — coordinated through an intercreditor subordination in which KeyBank subordinated to LSQ on purchased receivables. Below the senior secured stack sat roughly $4.8 million of equipment-financing claims secured by specific collateral (haul trucks, an excavator, a sludge separation unit, trailers, and a wheel loader), approximately $21.3 million of unsecured trade debt, and roughly $34 million of environmental reclamation obligations held in COA trusts across 18 perpetual water-treatment sites. The enterprise also retained approximately $397.7 million in federal net operating losses (; ).
On the petition date the Debtors sought first-day relief including authority to pay roughly $1.4 million in accrued prepetition wages and continued benefits, a critical-vendors program of up to $6 million, and a combined DIP and cash-collateral package of up to $15 million — with $10.5 million available on an interim basis — from KIA II, LLC, after KeyBank declined to provide postpetition financing (Harrigan First Day DeclarationDkt. 28). That financing package was later approved by final order over the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors' limited objection, the sale process concluded with proceeds satisfying the DIP lender in full, and the controlling authority transitioned to a consensual wind-down cash-collateral regime with KeyBank that ran through mid-June 2025. With the sale completed and the wind-down budget exhausted, the Debtors' chapter 11 cases were dismissed on June 18, 2025 and reported ready for closing in early July 2025, with parallel CCAA recognition proceedings pursued in Canada.
