The sentiment amongst most in the upstream E&P world is that fall bank borrowing-base redeterminations will largely be a nonevent---in spite of fears to the contrary all summer. Most producers that barely survived the spring redeterminations thanks to the good graces of lenders not wanting to foreclose on any more assets have been working diligently in the interim to raise cash and eliminate debt to avoid the ax this fall. But don't breathe easy just yet, portends Tim Murray, managing partner with Guggenheim Partners. "The fall borrowing-base redetermination will be worse than the spring," he told a group at ADAM Houston. "I can be upbeat and lie to you or tell you the truth." For those who believe the spring redetermination season was gentle, he points to 20 E&P bankruptcies that resulted. "If that's not bad, what's your definition of bad?" he asks. Yet the spring season could have been worse, he said, if not for the fact that much of the distress was mitigated by attractive hedging. "When the hedges start to roll off and you can't replace them, that's when it's going to get tough," he warned. More companies will be forced to sell assets, to restructure or be thrown into bankruptcy. He said he is working with two clients currently with borrowing-base redeterminations still pending, but "we already know what the numbers are. Just run your bank price decks. You're going to see good management teams with good assets have a day of reckoning. It's coming." For its part, he said Guggenheim hedged its portfolio for two years in 2008 and is looking for a commodity-price spike to hedge again.