Bank Sues SemGroup's Kivisto

There are more troubles for SemGroup and its former president.  Late Friday afternoon, Bank of America filed a lawsuit against Tom Kivisto saying the energy company's founder owed the bank nearly $13 million.  The News On 6's Dan Bewley reports it's part of the fallout since SemGroup filed bankruptcy on Tuesday.

It was ten days ago when SemGroup told its lenders it was having serious financial issues. Two days later the company's founder, Tom Kivisto, was replaced as president and CEO. This past Tuesday SemGroup filed for bankruptcy protection. Since then, a legal windfall has been leveled at the Tulsa company.

Late Friday, Bank of America filed suit against Kivisto, saying he owed more than $12 million on a loan given to his foundation.

A SemGroup subsidiary, SemCrude, is accused of blocking efforts by one its creditors to take control over the construction of a 524 mile crude oil pipeline from Colorado to a terminal in Cushing.

General Electric Capital Corporation also says SemCrude took a $54 million loan that was supposed to go to the pipeline and sent it to SemGroup, one week before SemGroup's stock began its breathtaking fall.

Many are wondering how it got to this point. One analyst believes SemGroup's fall from grace began nearly two months ago.

Stephen Schork keeps an eye on the energy market from his base in Pennsylvania. He points to June 5th and 6th as the days when SemGroup went bankrupt. The company, Schork says, thought the price of crude oil would go down, but those two days in June saw something dramatically different.

"On June 5th and June 6th, NYMEX crude oil, over a two day span, in about 26 hours actually, moved $16 almost $17 a barrel inside that time step. That has never happened before, absolutely unprecedented," said energy analyst Stephen Schork.

Schork says it appears SemGroup did nothing illegal, he believes the company just made decisions that put it on the wrong side of the market. He says the company most likely will not be able to rebound without selling a lot of its assets.

"A $3.2 billion loss is a substantial hole to try to dig out of and dig yourself out of by yourself," said energy analyst Stephen Schork.