History
Tengasco, a small Tennessee and Kansas oil company, fended off a hostile bid, shrank to one Kansas field, then merged with Riley in 2021 and grew through Permian deals.
2005-2013: Leaning on Dolphin
The record opens with Tengasco, a Knoxville-based company with Kansas oil and gas properties and Tennessee operations: the Swan Creek field, a pipeline and landfill-gas facilities. In August 2005 it retired all of its Series B and C preferred stock, with a face value of $5,113,045.39 plus accrued dividends and interest. Holders could choose cash or common stock. Holders of about 54.3% took cash, totalling $1,814,184.30, mostly funded by a new $1,814,000 loan from Dolphin Offshore Partners at 12%, secured on company assets. The rest took 9,567,620 new common shares, 4,595,040 of them going to Dolphin. That diluted other shareholders and deepened the company's dependence on Dolphin, whose Peter Salas was chairman. The same filing extended Dolphin's existing $700,000 note to the end of 2005.
In July 2006 Tengasco replaced that reliance with a $50 million revolving credit facility from Citibank Texas, secured on its oil and gas properties, with an initial draw of $2.6 million. In 2008 it agreed to buy Black Diamond Oil's producing properties in Rooks County, Kansas for $5.35 million, helped by Sovereign Bank lifting its borrowing base from $7 million to $11 million. The purchase, the Riffe field, closed in July 2008. The record is then quiet until 2015, apart from the sale of the Swan Creek field and pipeline in 2013, which the beats mention only in passing.
2015: A hostile bid fails
In June 2015 ICN Fund I launched an unsolicited cash tender offer for all Tengasco shares at $0.2736 each, about $15.75 million in total. The board recommended in July that shareholders reject it, saying the price undervalued the company. ICN extended the offer, and by September about 4.26 million shares had been tendered, with another 1.95 million submitted by guaranteed delivery, well short of the 51% condition. The offer expired on 13 October 2015 without meeting its condition, and Tengasco stayed independent.
2016-2020: Down to one field
In January 2018 Tengasco sold its last Tennessee assets, the methane-recovery facilities at the Carter Valley landfill, to Tennessee Renewable Group for $2.65 million. That completed its exit from Tennessee and left its Kansas oil properties as its only operations. In January 2020 it hired a financial advisor and began reviewing business-combination options. In October it agreed to merge with Riley Exploration - Permian, LLC, a private Permian Basin oil producer.
Under the terms registered in November, each Riley unit would convert into 97.796467 Tengasco shares. Riley's members would hold about 95% of the combined company and Tengasco's own shareholders about 5%. A December amendment disclosed three shareholder lawsuits alleging the registration statement was false or misleading, with plaintiffs seeking to block the merger until the disclosure was fixed. It also showed that directors and officers held 51.5% of the stock, 49.6% in Salas's hands alone, and that all seven proved undeveloped drilling locations had been removed from reserves in 2019 as uneconomic.
2021-2026: Riley's Permian company
The merger closed in late February 2021, with a 1-for-12 reverse stock split and a new name, Riley Exploration Permian, Inc. Its business became chiefly Riley's Permian Basin oil and gas operations. In October 2021 the board declared its first quarterly cash dividend, $0.31 per share.
In February 2023 the company agreed to buy New Mexico Yeso-trend assets in Eddy County from Pecos Oil & Gas for about $330 million, by far its largest deal since the merger. It closed in April, funded by revolver borrowings and a first bond offering of $200 million of 10.50% Senior Unsecured Notes due 2028.
In May 2025 it agreed to buy Silverback Exploration II, more Yeso-trend assets in Eddy County, for about $142 million plus an oil-price-linked earnout of up to $1.875 million a quarter through 2027. It closed in July, funded by revolver borrowings and cash. In December 2025 the company agreed to sell its Dovetail Midstream subsidiary, its Eddy County midstream infrastructure, to Targa Northern Delaware for about $111 million plus up to $60 million in volume-based earnouts. The sale of these non-core assets was intended to pay down debt, and the agreement stood as the company's latest development.
Written from the 20 story beats below (2005 to 4 Dec 2025), which come from the company's own announcements and filings.