North America’s small and mid-sized energy companies are searching for creative ways to stay afloat as investors smell blood in the water from the almost 60 percent fall in the price of oil since June. Oil and natural gas companies are straining for solutions before cuts in credit lines and increases in lending rates hit home in April, when banks re-price the collateral used to secure revolving credit lines. Some are turning to more creative forms of financing as familiar sources of money dry up. That financing is coming from hedge funds, private equity shops and mega-wealthy investors like billionaire Carl Icahn who have the cash to weather a prolonged downturn and are on the hunt for deals among the wounded, bankers and analysts say. Oil operators, meanwhile, are laying off staff, freezing salaries and deferring investments to conserve cash. “Companies have lived in a state of […]