OGX escaped a R$13.8B bankruptcy as creditor-owned Dommo, absorbed by PetroRio in 2022

Eike Batista's oil company OGX filed for recuperação judicial on October 30, 2013, under more than R$13.8 billion of debt. The case judge noted the company generated over a thousand direct jobs in the oil and gas industry and that defaulting on its suppliers 'would have dragged many companies into bankruptcy' with it — the social utility argument for keeping it alive rather than liquidating.

Creditors approved the plan on June 3, 2014, and Rio's 4th Business Court ratified it on June 13. The deal converted US$5.8 billion of debt into shares representing 25% of the restructured company's capital, plus US$215 million of super-priority guaranteed debentures convertible into another 65% — handing roughly nine tenths of OGX's equity to the people it owed. An October 2014 capital increase that executed the conversions became, in the company's words, the 'important milestone' of the restructuring.

On August 2, 2017 the same court declared all plan obligations fulfilled and closed the judicial recovery — under three years and ten months after the filing. The survivor, by then trading as Dommo Energia, kept its rights in the Campos Basin. On Sept. 1, 2022 PetroRio signed a memorandum with Prisma Capital, Dommo's controller, to absorb the company: holders of each Dommo share would receive 0.05 PetroRio shares or R$1.85 in cash within 90 days.

Court protection closed in under four years with the company still producing; its surviving Campos Basin rights were folded into PetroRio (PRIO3) in a 2022 combination.

Swapping debt for 90% of the equity aligned creditors with the company's survival instead of forcing a fire-sale liquidation.

Super-priority debentures attracted rescue money by promising payment ahead of every other claim.

The judge deferred to creditors on the plan's economic viability, avoiding years of litigation over whether OGX could be saved.

The restructured shell still held producing-field revenue rights — real assets PetroRio later paid to consolidate.

When the debt dwarfs the equity, the creditors ARE the company: converting claims into control preserved a producing operator that liquidation would have destroyed.

Dommo's sole remaining asset by 2022 was the right to 5% of revenue, net of royalties, from the Tubarão Martelo and Polvo fields — a cluster operated by PetroRio producing about 17,500 barrels of oil a day. The combination, subject to shareholder and Cade approval, would give PetroRio 100% of the fields and fold the last piece of Batista's collapsed oil empire into Brazil's PRIO3 group.