PG&E is in a post-confirmation posture: the debtors’ reorganization path was fixed by the June 2020 plan and confirmation order, with later docket activity reflected in plan-implementation disputes such as cure objections rather than a still-open fight over case direction. The case began on January 29, 2019, when PG&E Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company filed chapter 11 after wildfire exposure, liquidity pressure, and an overlevered utility capital structure converged; the debtors described potential wildfire liabilities exceeding $30 billion, roughly $71.4 billion of assets, $51.7 billion of liabilities, and a utility business serving about 16 million customers in the Wells First Day DeclarationDkt. 28.
The immediate restructuring problem was not a traditional operating collapse but a need to keep a critical regulated utility functioning while channeling wildfire claims and preserving access to capital. PG&E entered chapter 11 with about $860 million of aggregate cash, only about $240 million available to the utility for operations, against a capital stack that included approximately $17.5 billion of Pacific Gas and Electric Company senior notes, a $2.85 billion utility revolver, pollution-control bond obligations, and parent and utility term-loan and revolver debt described in the Wells First Day DeclarationDkt. 28. To stabilize the case, the debtors pursued a $5.5 billion DIP package consisting of a $3.5 billion revolver, a $1.5 billion term loan, and a $500 million delayed-draw term loan, after Lazard ran a financing process in January 2019 and selected the J.P. Morgan-led proposal as the best available financing alternative in the .
Operational continuity remained a central case theme. The debtors sought authority to pay selected operational-integrity suppliers, and by late February 2019 had negotiated with the creditors’ and tort claimants’ committees to increase the interim supplier-payment cap from $30.1 million to $60 million while reviewing more than 670 filed or asserted liens totaling about $177.4 million, as set out in the Boken Operational Integrity Suppliers DeclarationDkt. 653. That relief framed the early case around controlled liquidity, vendor management, and safe utility operations while the larger wildfire-liability resolution and plan negotiations proceeded.
The plan path culminated with the debtors and shareholder proponents filing the June 19, 2020 joint chapter 11 plan, a 12-class reorganization plan, followed the next day by entry of the Confirmation OrderDkt. 8053 confirming the Joint Chapter 11 PlanDkt. 8048. The remaining posture reflected plan administration rather than a pending sale or alternative restructuring track, including later resolution of plan-supplement disputes such as G4S’s withdrawal of its cure objection tied to assumed contracts and leases under the plan in the G4S Withdrawal of ObjectionDkt. 10359.
