The boards of Lonesome Dove Petroleum Company and the Matching Fund Special Purpose Securitization Corporation — two subsidiaries of the V.I. Public Finance Authority — convened in back-to-back meetings Thursday to approve operating budgets and administrative matters.
The U.S. District Court of the Virgin Islands ordered Lonesome Dove into receivership in 2016 to satisfy more than $21 million in taxes owed to the Virgin Islands government. The same year, the company, which comprises subleased interests in federal oil and gas leases and mineral interests, was appraised at nearly $10 million. On Thursday, the public corporation’s board approved bylaws and a services agreement with the PFA for accounting, auditing, legal, financial and procurement work.
“This is similar to what we’ve done with the Matching Fund,” said Nathan Simmonds, PFA’s director of finance and administration. “It would allow the PFA to perform certain functions on behalf of the Lonesome Dove Corporation … In exchange for these services, the PFA would be paid a fee of $150,000 annually, and we reimburse for all out-of-pocket expenses paid on behalf of Lonesome Dove.”
Simmonds added that the PFA has been managing the entity for years without compensation, “and unlike the Matching Fund or other entities that we manage, this one is very labor intensive.”
“We have a staff member that was specifically hired to monitor the Lonesome Dove operations,” he said, which include more than 50 agreements across 11 states and total more than 200 oil well operations. “So … it’s quite an expensive operation to monitor.”
The board then approved a $1.02 million operating budget for the 2025 fiscal year and a $964,500 operating budget for 2026 to cover accounting and legal services.
