Energera: the Frac Shack fleet goes to auction at a $14.2 million floor

A single multi-well frac pad, Energera's chief executive explains to the court, may need twenty to forty high-pressure pump trucks running continuously for weeks, and the Spruce Grove company's business was fuelling them automatically, on site, from its own mobile units, per the Second Affidavit of Todd Van Vliet, Mar. 11, 2026, paras. 19, 26. The executive, Todd Van Vliet, deposes that he spent twenty years in private legal practice before joining his brother and father in a bulk fuel business called Environmental Refuelling Systems, that he co-invented the Frac Shack technology in 2010, and that he took over that line of business full time in 2013 and grew it "from a Western Canadian service business into the multinational entity that currently serves three countries on two continents." His father, Maury Van Vliet, brought the industrial experience, drawn from remote helicopter refuelling, per the Second Affidavit of Todd Van Vliet, Mar. 11, 2026, paras. 15, 17. Frac Shack Inc. took the name Energera Inc. on September 13, 2021, per the corporate search attached to the First Affidavit of Cameron Bailey, Feb. 12, 2026, Ex. 2.

The group he describes runs two divisions. The Frac Shack division sells automated fuelling for diesel, bi-fuel and natural gas frac fleets from "modular, self-contained, and fully mobile units." The Sandtinel division, bought from an Alberta engineering company in 2020, makes patented flowback sand separators, the Defender, the Maverick and the General, which the affidavit says also reduce methane released during flowback. The group works in Alberta and British Columbia, in eight U.S. states with frequent deployments in three more, and in Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale play through Frac Shack Sociedad Por Acciones Simplificada, 51% owned by Energera and outside the lenders' definition of a loan party, per the Second Affidavit of Todd Van Vliet, Mar. 11, 2026, paras. 19, 21. On August 12, 2026, the court approved the sale of the fleet at auction.

Two applications and a consent order

The lenders are a syndicate of Royal Bank of Canada, as agent, National Bank of Canada, ATB Financial and Export Development Canada. Under a third amended and restated credit agreement of June 28, 2024, they made available a $49,700,000 non-revolving term facility and RBC a $7,500,000 operating facility, both maturing September 27, 2026. The group missed its financial covenants at September 30 and December 31, 2024, and again at July 31 and September 30, 2025, according to the First Affidavit of Cameron Bailey, Feb. 12, 2026, paras. 3, 12–13, 25, sworn by a senior director in RBC's special loans group. A forbearance agreement of February 14, 2025 was amended five times and ran out on January 31, 2026. The third amendment required the group to run a sale and investment solicitation process through a financial adviser, Sequeira Partners, and to sign a consent receivership order to be held until the forbearance expired. Alvarez & Marsal Canada Inc. had been the lenders' financial adviser since about February 20, 2025. On February 6, 2026, the syndicate demanded payment and served notices under s. 244 of the BIA; as at February 2, principal owing was $39,061,058.27, including $35,975,896.27 was on the term facility and $2,971,171.30 on the operating line, per the First Affidavit of Cameron Bailey, Feb. 12, 2026, paras. 29–31, 34–38, 41.

The company answered with a CCAA application of its own, proposing RJT Restructuring Inc. as monitor, a ten-day initial stay, and administration and directors' charges of $250,000 each. It called the lender-mandated process "doomed to failure" because the forbearance defined a qualifying transaction as one that paid the syndicate in full, and it said the liquidity crisis "was precipitated solely by the Banks' decision to freeze essential operating accounts." It also alleged that A&M, as the lenders' adviser, "faced a significant conflict of interest," having steered stakeholders toward a receivership in which it was the proposed receiver, per the CCAA Originating Application, Mar. 12, 2026, paras. 1, 10–12. Mr. Van Vliet's affidavit puts the group's January 2026 cash generation at approximately US$500,000 net of operating costs, interest and lender-required consultants; counts 216 trade creditors owed about $1,235,331.88; and relies on a 2024 EY valuation, done at the lenders' insistence, that put net orderly liquidation value equal to the debt at December 31, 2024. He deposes that he was told by RBC's representative that the group "would not like the result" if it did not sign the consent order, and that he believes it was signed under duress, per the Second Affidavit of Todd Van Vliet, Mar. 11, 2026, paras. 24, 40, 52, 57, 69.

Justice Colin C.J. Feasby heard both on March 12 and gave reasons on March 17, reported as Energera Inc (Re), 2026 ABKB 200. "This is a case of battling applications," he began, per the Reasons for Decision (2026 ABKB 200), Mar. 17, 2026, para. 1. He had adjourned the lenders' application on February 24 so management could talk to a "White Knight," whose March 5 offer was "significantly below the amount required to repay the Syndicate" and carried a large no-fault termination fee. The earlier process had been promoted to 187 parties; the expressions of interest it produced "would have fallen far short," per the Reasons for Decision (2026 ABKB 200), Mar. 17, 2026, paras. 11, 13–14.

The judge worked through the six factors in the Newbery, Byrne and Cross framework for competing CCAA and receivership applications and added two of his own: whether management had already had a sufficient opportunity to restructure or sell, and whether the company had signed a consent receivership order. He found the relationship deteriorated but not irreparable, and both parties to have acted in good faith. The factors that did the work were cost, who stood to recover, and the year management had already had. CCAA processes, he wrote, are typically more expensive than receiverships, and with the syndicate apparently the only party with an economic interest, the CCAA's transparency counted for less while its priming charges would in effect come out of the lenders' recovery. "Energera's management team had their shot at selling or restructuring the company or its assets and failed." The duress argument he read as colloquial: "Energera could have refused and sought CCAA protection… That is not duress," per the Reasons for Decision (2026 ABKB 200), Mar. 17, 2026, paras. 17–19, 21–22, 26–27, 31–32. The same day he signed the consent receivership order, appointing A&M receiver under s. 243(1) of the BIA and s. 13(2) of the Judicature Act and waiving the s. 244(2) notice period, per the Consent Receivership Order, Mar. 17, 2026, paras. 2–3.