Great Western Petroleum, LLC Announces Recapitalization Plan to Convert 100% of its Preferred Equity to Common Equity

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January 28, 2021 – Denver, CO

The Broe Group to Inject New Equity into Recapitalized Company

The Broe Group’s energy affiliate, Great Western Petroleum, LLC (the “Company”), today announced that the holders of all of the Company’s outstanding common units have agreed in principle with the holders of all of the Company’s outstanding preferred units to enter into a comprehensive equity recapitalization transaction (the “Recapitalization”). Such holders have agreed to amend and restate the Company’s limited liability company agreement to effect the exchange of all outstanding preferred units for new common units.  In addition, the Broe Group will make a new equity investment in the Company

Upon the consummation of the Recapitalization, the Company would cancel all existing preferred units, leaving only common units outstanding. The transactions would result in the elimination of the annual preferred distributions of approximately $23.7 million based upon the approximately $296 million of face amount of preferred units outstanding at December 31, 2020 at the quarterly cash distribution rate of 2%.

The Recapitalization is contingent upon the refinancing in full of the Company’s existing senior notes due 2021. There can be no assurance that any of the foregoing transactions will be consummated on their expected timeline or at all.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security, nor shall there be any sale of any security of the Company or any of its subsidiaries, in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction.

About Great Western Petroleum, LLC

Denver-based Great Western Petroleum, LLC is an independent oil and natural gas company focused on the exploration, development, acquisition and exploitation of unconventional reserves of oil, natural gas and NGLs in the core of the Wattenberg Field, which is located within the DJ Basin. The Company’s properties are primarily located in northwestern Adams County and western Weld County in Colorado.

About The Broe Group

Based in Denver, The Broe Group and its affiliates form a privately-owned, multi-billion-dollar real estate, transportation, energy and investment organization with assets owned and managed across North America. Together, Broe-managed companies employ more than 1,000 people and support employment of thousands of others through operations such as its Great Western Industrial Park in Northern Colorado. Its transportation affiliate, OmniTRAX, Inc., is one of North America’s largest private railroad and transportation management companies specializing in: management services, railroad and port services, intermodal solutions and industrial switching operations. Its energy affiliates include Great Western Petroleum LLC, the largest private operator in the third most prolific U.S. basin. Broe Real Estate Group acquires, develops and manages office and industrial properties, medical office buildings and multi-family communities across the country, including premier assets in many of the most desirable markets. The Broe Group also has multiple investment affiliates, including Three Leaf Ventures, which is focused on innovative healthcare technology start-ups. For more information, visit broe.com.

Link to PDF can be found HERE.

COVID-19 Response: Great Western Remains Committed to Communities Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

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January 2021 – Denver, CO

At Great Western, we believe in taking care of the people in the communities in which we operate. While 2020 brought many challenges, our commitment to employees and communities remained steady. We have made it a priority to live out our values, even when times are tough: Stewardship, Teamwork, Excellence, People, Growth and Resilience.

As a global pandemic has upheaved much of our economy and some of our day-to-day operations, we knew that our communities needed support. In addition to the more than 50 Colorado nonprofits that we work with annually, in 2020, we dedicated resources, volunteer time and funding to struggling organizations and nonprofits as part of our COVID-19 relief program. Read more about how the following organizations put donations to use to support families and kids.

Great Western also supported the northern Colorado fire relief to help combat the wildfires in Colorado.

Together, we have helped build homes for our neighbors, uplifted students with tutoring resources and renovations, aided fire relief efforts, supported suicide prevention awareness – and that’s only a snapshot of how our team has supported our communities this year. We look forward to the future where our employees can get back in the community and continue supporting nonprofits and organizations in-person.

Our People: Great Western’s Susan Fakharzadeh Wins 2020 GRIT Award

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January 2021 – Denver, CO

Great Western supports, empowers, and truly values our employees because they are the foundation of our business – and we have been lucky to employ the best of the best. It’s through our core values that we uplift our amazing talent behind the desk and in the field. We are proud to recognize our vice president of corporate communications and government affairs, Susan Fakharzadeh, who received a 2020 GRIT Award in the executive category!

The GRIT Award winners were chosen from hundreds of applicants, encompassing oil and gas, utilities, alternative energy, academia, and non-government organizations from around the world. Each winner showcases a commitment to GRIT – growth, resilience, innovation and transition – within the industry.

“Susan’s innovative work and masterful demeanor doesn’t go unnoticed at Great Western,” said Rich Frommer, CEO of Great Western. “We are proud to recognize her hard-earned efforts as she continually highlights and lives by our core values. Through her initiatives and goals, Susan pushes our organization forward every day, further solidifying Great Western as a leader in the oil and natural gas industry. For that, we are extremely grateful.”

As an influential leader in the business community, a mentor in the oil and gas industry, and a fierce proponent of women pursuing leadership opportunities inside and outside of the workplace, it’s no wonder Susan was selected among hundreds of candidates for her extraordinary leadership skills.

Susan has spent the last 11 years of her career dedicated to political engagement, policy work, outreach, and education in the oil and gas industry across North America. As the first female to be promoted into a vice present role at Great Western, Susan’s leadership has moved the organization into new directions while setting examples at every level.

Susan is a champion of Great Western’s core values; she continuously showcases exceptional stewardship by leading community partner initiatives. Susan passionately cares about Great Western’s contributions to the environment and the surrounding communities, as well as her own dedication to serving the nonprofit sector.

Under Susan’s direction, Great Western’s influence has grown exponentially at a local, state and federal level through established relationships with elected and appointed officials and increased community partnerships. In 2019, Susan’s leadership and forward-thinking action propelled the community investment program, which led to the support more than 53 Colorado nonprofits. In 2020, despite the economic downturn as a result of COVID-19 and the oil market crash, Susan has worked to not only maintain, but increase, Great Western’s community investment by 50% over 2019. Additionally, she leads the way in supporting major fundraising and community initiatives in local education, family services, food banks, health care and military organizations. Susan organized and led Great Western employees in preparing 5,000 meal boxes for Adams County schools, serving 45,000 meals to Food Bank of the Rockies and Weld County Foodbank, and building a new home for a single mother of four children with Greeley-Weld Habitat for Humanity.

Along with having “GRIT,” this award is well-deserved as Susan excels in a male-dominated field and assumes leadership in an industry that is constantly scrutinized. Susan’s constant creativity, advocacy, and positivity empowers her team and the natural gas and oil industry, ultimately setting her apart not only in Colorado’s energy industry, but its business circles at large.

With a seasoned career in natural gas and oil, Susan is highly respected in the industry and fights on behalf of energy operations in the face of any challenge. Susan stands for compassion, safety, and community, which is the face of oil and gas that the industry needs. Susan is a huge asset to our team and we’re ecstatic to see her efforts recognized!

The GRIT Awards were created by Katie Mehnert, CEO and founder of ALLY by Pink Petro, with this year’s awards sponsored by Gibson Dunn, Marathon Global and NES Global Talent. See the full list of GRIT Award winners at this link.

Paving the Way for Environmental, Social and Governance Frameworks in the Energy Industry

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January 2021—DENVER, CO

Over the past several years, Great Western has been committed to leading the way in developing a new corporate social responsibility framework in accordance with standards defined as environmental, social and governance (ESG). In today’s energy industry, strong ESG policies make lives better for external stakeholders, as well as set the conditions for financial success, employee happiness, and a cohesive sense of purpose for the entire organization. 

​At Great Western, our mission is to produce energy in a safe and responsible manner so we can improve people’s lives. A strong and evolving ESG framework has helped us live up to our goal.

While all three pillars of an ESG strategy are important, in our industry, environmental matters often take center stage. We have maintained a laser focus on how we impact the environment that we operate in and are continually looking for ways to be better stewards of our irreplaceable resource.

Environment

Technological innovation is an important way that members of the energy industry can make a significant environmental impact. For example, water management has been one focus of our ESG policy. Recently, we began deploying technologies to reduce the amount of fresh water used in operations and reuse water as often as we safely can. We also have worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through technological innovations and operational efficiencies, allowing us to produce the cleanest barrel of oil. Since 2015, we have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 48% while our operations grew by 700%. With the total environmental, health and safety inspections in 2019 across 122 sites, each site averaged 425 EHS inspections that year. Through these aggressive environmental initiatives, Great Western continues to be a leader in the natural gas and oil industry in Colorado and beyond.  

Away from the work site, our company supports sustainability and environmental restoration in our surrounding areas. One way we do this is though our partnership with the Butterfly Pavilion in Broomfield, Colorado, to study and determine the pollinators on this land to plant long-term landscaping on our facility berms that benefit the species and pollinators as part of the reclamation process. This project, to our knowledge, is the first of its kind in the nation and is something of which we are incredibly proud.

Social

By focusing on the betterment of employees, supplier relationships, stakeholders, and how interactions are handled with local communities where energy is developed, we have created positive relationships with our communities and our stakeholders at the base of our social policies.

Those policies include our commitment to creating a positive culture where most workplace injuries can be prevented. Some ways we do this is through the use of continuous monitoring devices at field locations, strict compliance and conducting thousands of hours of training each year to create awareness of safety risks and to prevent accidents. Cumulatively, Great Western employees receive over 1,000 hours of safety training annually including industry-specific best practices, OSHA requirements, and hazard identification and control. This has led to Great Western employees working over 500,000 hours without an OSHA recordable injury or lost time incident. In addition, Great Western implements a robust safety incentive program for its employees that encourages and rewards the practice of freely sharing ideas for safety improvements.

Another element of our social focus is our commitment to the communities in which we operate. In 2019, our employees spent more than 500 hours volunteering in their communities, and we supported 53 non-profits and civic organizations. Our employees also served more than 45,000 meals at foodbanks through the Great Western Holiday Giving Campaign. We upped our stewardship budget by 50% for the year 2020, and these resources have been directed to projects in the diverse communities in which we operate. In one instance, Great Western’s dedication to inclusivity helped shape brilliant young minds in a partnership with the Colorado Association of Black Professional Engineers and Scientists (CABPES), a nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging African Americans and other underrepresented youth to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. In the face of the unanticipated COVID crisis, our social investment team identified areas of critical support through food banks, energy assistance programs, and family services groups to answer the unprecedented needs our communities have faced.

Governance

Our ESG framework is further strengthened with an improved corporate governance structure that includes a renewed focus on avoiding conflicts of interest, strict oversight responsibility assigned to senior leaders, and the maintenance of positive relationships with regulators and lawmakers.

Within that corporate governance structure, we have a diverse and experienced leadership team; in fact, over 40% of managers in our organization are women. Not only does promoting women increase diverse perspectives at the top of the decision-making chain, but several studies, including the Credit Suisse 3000, demonstrate that the higher the percentage of women in top management, the greater the returns are for shareholders. Our diverse experience at senior levels allows us to see issues from different perspectives and arrive at solutions that are good for the company, investors and a multitude of external stakeholders. One example being the expansion of Great Western’s community investment program led by our vice president of corporate communications and government affairs, Susan Fakharzadeh.

To further solidify the governance piece of our ESG framework, we create memoranda of understanding with local governments that ensure our work is compatible with the future use of the places where we operate. We are also members of state trade associations, including the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, which help guide our internal governance policies and allows us to influence other market participants and stakeholders. We hold leadership positions within organizations that foster economic development and influence within the broader business community, both to represent and establish a critical voice for the energy industry within the communities where we operate.

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ESG forms the basis for operations at Great Western, and each year, we continue to drill deeper into each pillar. Our board and management team share a commitment to ESG, and that dedication has resulted in a strong company with a healthy work environment, thriving communities, and a high level of stakeholder engagement. For more details on our ESG efforts, visit our environment, social and governance pages.