?After a long drought, two upstream-related IPOs have been filed. Boulder, Colo.-based Ellora Energy?Inc. has filed an S-1 to IPO up to $100 million in shares on Nasdaq as LORA. The share price has not been determined. Merrill Lynch?& Co. and Raymond James are lead underwriters and KeyBanc Capital Markets, Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., Howard Weil Inc., Tristone Capital Inc. and Thomas?Weisel?Partners?LLC are underwriters.

Ellora has oil and gas assets in southwestern Kansas in Hugoton Field and in East Texas/Louisiana in the James lime and Haynesville shale plays. As of Dec. 31, Ellora held 72,000 net acres in East Texas and 631,000 net acres in Kansas.

Production as of Dec. 31 was 46.6 million cu. ft. of gas equivalent per day. Proved reserves were 144 billion cu. ft. of gas and 8.4 million barrels of oil for a total 194 billion cu. ft. of gas equivalent (87 billion proved developed).

Ellora will use its portion of the proceeds to pay debt on its credit facility. It will not receive any proceeds from shares offered by selling stockholders.

T.?Scott Martin is chairman, chief executive and president. He was president of TPEX Exploration and chief operating officer of Alta Energy. Steven? Enger is executive vice president and chief financial officer. He was vice president, investor relations and corporate development and prior to that was an analyst and research director with Petrie Parkman?&?Co. Richard?F. McClure Jr. is chief operating officer. He was vice president of Questa Engineering.

For its part, Toronto-based Groppe-Middlefield Energy Fund has filed a preliminary prospectus for an IPO of an undisclosed number of units at C$12 each. The syndicate of agents is being co-led by CIBC and RBC Capital Markets, and BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., National Bank Financial Inc., Scotia Capital Inc., TD Securities Inc., Blackmont Capital Inc., Canaccord Capital Corp., Dundee Securities Corp., HSBC Securities (Canada) Inc., Manulife Securities Inc., Middlefield Capital Corp., Raymond James Ltd., Richardson Partners Financial Ltd., GMP Securities LP, Haywood Securities Inc., Research Capital Corp. and Wellington West Capital Markets Inc. are agents.

Houston-based oil and gas consulting firm Groppe, Long & Littell will be special advisor to the fund. Toronto-based Middlefield Capital Corp. will advise regarding the fund’s investments. With approximately C$3 billion in assets under management, Middlefield has specialized in the oil and gas and mining sectors for more than 25 years.

Henry Groppe will be the individual primarily involved in providing services to the fund. He is founder of Groppe, Long & Littell and has more than 50 years experience in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries.

The fund is expected to pay monthly distributions over the next 12 months amounting to $0.60 per unit, which represents an annualized yield of 5% on the original subscription price.

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