I own oil & gas working interests in a few wells in Rusk County, Texas. These working interests are the remnants of a $300,000 investment that I made with Striker Petroleum in their Brittany Program in 2006. It turned out to be a Ponzi scheme with the initial promise of a 12% annual return. Those returns lasted about a year, then quickly dried up with meager or no returns after that.
Long story short, that whole Striker Working Interest Program, along with a few other Striker Working Interest Programs went into receivership in 2011. According to the receiver’s report & SEC, all the investments were then worth about 5% of what investors had paid. Farmers National Company was appointed as agent to manage the Brittany properties. In 2016, Farmers sold about 85% of the Brittany properties at auction and the investors received “pennies on the dollar” of their original investment. In 2018, Farmers tried to sell the remaining properties, but could not find a buyer. Farmers then resigned as agent, citing the lack of production could no longer warrant the cost of managing the assets.
I have annually filed Texas Franchise Tax & affiliated reports and maintained two resident agents at an annual cost of $238 a year. These remaining properties in Rusk County are worthless! There is no production. If Farmers could not find a buyer for cumulative working interests of about 25 investors at auction, there’s not a chance that I could find a buyer for my share alone! Now with Covid 19 and low price of oil & gas, I don’t see this changing for years to come. I want to dissolve my G.P. & LLC entities and walk away from what’s left of this disastrous investment! Any thoughts or inputs would be greatly appreciated!